And there was still a lot of opening and closing of the front door, so something was going on.
Boji screeched, upset. That would bring his father in if that went on. But Boji’s breakfast was late, too, and he was out of sorts. Cajeiri left his breakfast half eaten, went over to the small table, took a raw egg out of their hiding-place, and went to feed the rascal.
He carefully opened the cage. Boji saw the egg and was right by the door, ready to climb up on his arm, where Boji now preferred to sit to eat his eggs. Boji’s funny little face had brightened delightfully when he saw the egg coming, and it made him a lot happier. He enjoyed watching Boji eat: his little tongue was very neat and clever, and he could reduce an egg down to absolutely nothing but clean shell, light as could be, in an amazingly short time. He scratched behind Boji’s ear and got a happy chirr out of him, while Boji held his egg for himself and plied that long tongue cleaning out the egg.
Just as a knock sounded at the door and the door opened nearly simultaneously with the knock. Boji exploded, the eggshell flew, and Boji bounded off the top of the cage and up to a hanging plant, then off for the top of the bookcase and the hanging and on to the tall vase and, Cajeiri saw to his alarm, right for the door, where a fool of a woman stood wide-eyed with the door wide open.
Worse, she yelled and ducked.
Boji shrieked, leaped for the woodwork and sailed right over the servant’s head, right out the door into the hall.
“Get him!” Cajeiri cried, and all four of his bodyguards rushed the door, shoving the woman—one of his mother’s servants—out of the way. The servant lost her balance, rebounded off the table by the door and sent it skidding over the bare tile edge of the room before she fell flat on the tiles by the doorway.
Cajeiri ran past to the hall, but there was no sign of Boji, just Lucasi and Jegari looking about in every direction, and too many doors open. The servant’s door to the sitting room stood open, the door to his father’s office was open, and past that, there was the accommodation and the bath. The door to the further hall and the kitchens and the security station and his mother’s suite was open. Worst, the door right beside his had the servants’ passages, which went even downstairs, if thosedoors should be open. Only the door to the foyer was shut.
It was a disaster. “Why is the servants’ door open?” he asked angrily. “Which way did he go, did you see?”
“One fears he may have gotten to the far hall, nandi,” Jegari said.
Boji had no harness on. No leash.
And it was his fault. His stupidity. He had taken Boji out of the cage without his leash, because Boji would be held by his interest in the egg, and Boji was stronger and trickier than he had ever imagined.
And now Boji was loose somewhere. Even his aishid in immediate pursuit had not been fast enough to see which way he had gone.
“Antaro and Veijico are searching as quietly as possible, nandi,” Lucasi said. “Shall we search?”
“Do,” he said. “Do.” He heard a step behind him, remembered the servant and turned. The servant gave a stiff little bow. “Leave my suite alone, nadi!” he snapped at her. “You are not to open that door.”
“Young gentleman,” the woman protested.
“We have said!” It was mani’s expression, and he used it, spun on his heel and headed for the sitting room servant’s door, the first one. And the sitting room had its otherdoors open on the foyer. And even as he stood there in shock, he heard the front door open and stay open.
He went out to the front hall and the foyer, trying to compose himself, and saw his father’s major d’ receiving mail from someone, with the door standing half open. Neither man looked alarmed.
One could just imaginec
The transaction done, the major d’ closed the door and turned. “Young lord,” the major d’ said. “Your father has requested you not be in the foyer without a bodyguard.”
“And werequest this door not stand open!” he said. “Ever!” And he marched back and shut the doors between the sitting room and the foyer. Shut them hard, one and then the other.
And he had been rude, he knew, and he had been rude to the servant his aishid had knocked down, and he had insulted his father’s major d’, an estimable old man.
And Boji was missing somewhere in a very large apartment.
The woman was still in the hallway when he got back. Cajeiri said to her, quietly and deliberately, “You are not to tell anyone. Anyone! Or you will have me upset with you for the rest of my life!”
The servant looked a little angry. Cajeiri didn’t, at the moment, care, but he thought it good, on mani’s teaching, not to make the woman think she had an enemy. “If I get him back, and if you are discreet, that is all I want, nadi. I shall forgive it. But not if you talk to my mother! Neverif you walk to my mother!”
“Nandi,” the servant objected.
“One does not care if my father himself has told you to report, nadi. You will not talk, or I shall remember it forever, and you will notbe happy!”
“Shall I search for him?”
He drew two quick, deep breaths. “You may search the servants’ hall, quietly, and without attracting attention. If you find doors are open, close them, but remember which doors and report them to my aishid. Above all, do not leave any doors open!”
“Yes, nandi,” the servant said.
“Go,” Cajeiri said, and went, himself, and joined the search at the end of the hall.
Two serious death threats and a warning from the Guild in a single morning was definitely worse than the average day. The news about the dowager’s agreement with the Taisigin Marid had begun to get out.
And there were rumors, Banichi reported as Bren walked the distance to Ilisidi’s apartment, that the agreement was actually between Tabini-aiji and the Marid.
Bet on it, the rumors would swear that various disadvantageous provisions were in the agreement, privately negotiated by the paidhi-aiji. One rumormonger’s private fear went into full-scale distribution as fact as the rumor passed through the usual channels.
“We had better get this agreement signed, nadiin-ji,” Bren said to his aishid, “before they claim we’ve traded the space station into the bargain.”
“The controversy is decidedly warming up,” Tano said.
“And in so few days,” Jago said. “One can never get factsdistributed so quickly.”
The dowager had made room in her schedule—she had not said whose meeting she had moved to accommodate the paidhi-aiji, but Bren suspected Cenedi’s absence and the fact that the dowager was currently attended by two of the lesser-rank bodyguard meant that Cenedi and Nawari were attending some otherwise important meeting in her stead.
As for the information he had brought, he could only forge ahead—not that he wanted to tell the dowager that there was trouble in the aiji’s household, but Ilisidi’s affairs were bumping up against the Ajuri-Atageini feud, and there were reasons. He had thought it over and over, and he had made his decision—he had to tell her, in such a way it did not inflame the situation.
There was the requisite tea service. And afterward, the dowager patiently heard everything he had to say, then waved her ruby-ringed hand dismissively.
“Well, well,” she said, “and well presented, paidhi-aiji. One reads very well between the lines. And one has seen it coming. We have known Damiri-daja from the day she took her first steps, and we are all too well acquainted with the Ajuri-Atageini issue. One was, to be quite honest, never that surprised that the prior lord of Ajuri should die of indigestion. Nor surprised that the new lord of Ajuri has noticed his daughter sitting next to my grandson.” A waggle of fingers that sparked ruby fire. “And Tati-ji has certainly noticed his notice. It hardly surprises him. But—Damiri-daja had a falling-out with Tatiseigi, naturally; she was young and foolish. She had to imagine that her father in Ajuri would be the perfect parent. She went to him—she came flying back again, having found no great solace there. Tatiseigi took her back. And she met my grandson from that standpointcso things became as you have witnessed. She has grown up somewhat suspicious of relatives’ motives. She has been a staunch and stable match for my grandson. But Damiri-daja has always suspected uscshe suspects anyone whose advice to my grandson supercedes her own. And removing her child from her care—but the heir of the aishidi’tat was at risk. I could keep him safe from assassination. I could teach him what he needed to know. I could set the stamp of the Padi Valley conservatives on him, through his great-uncle. Should he lack these advantages? What could she possibly expect of Cajeiri’s father—considering the actions of her own?”