“Get it!” she shouted, and at the yellow top of the room, up among the lace draperies, raced a small black streak, leaping from drape to drape.
“Close the windows!” Cajeiri cried, because the tall windows were all standing wide open. “Quick, close the windows! Boji! Boji! Come!”
Boji shrieked, then turned and jumped from curtain top to curtain top, coming his way. Cajeiri flung up his hands, and a black missile hurtled through his hands and hit him right in the chest at full force, arms around his neck. He stumbled backwards—would have fallen, except for his mother’s bodyguard. Boji clawed his coat and shirt, trying to get into his collar, and he hugged Boji tight, wrapping him in his coat as he gained his balance. His mother was shouting about her lace and her nursery and that animal, which was not quieting Boji at all.
One of his mother’s guard tried to take Boji from him.
“No!” he said, holding on; the woman got hold of Boji, and Boji bit the woman. Blood spurted all over, the bodyguard reacted, and his mother yelled, “Get that animal!”
“Stop them!” he yelled at his own guard, and twisted away to protect Boji, ducking behind Antaro.
“Daja-ma!” the wounded bodyguard cried, and the whole room froze. Cajeiri stood back in shock, with blood all over his coat and his young bodyguard making a wall between him and his mother’s very senior and meaning-business bodyguard, two men and two women. “You stay back!” he shouted at them. “Mother, honored Mother, he has done nothing wrong!”
“Who said you could havesuch a thing?” his mother said. “Son of mine, this tops all! Who brought such a creature into this apartment?”
“My father has said I may have him, honored Mother,” he said. He was shaking, he was so upset, but he managed a little bow. A very little one, because Boji was stiff as a wound spring and apt to make a break if he let his coat gap at all. “One regrets. A servant startled him.”
“Are you bleeding?”
Concern from his mother. That was at least something. And he did notwant his bodyguard to have to fight off his mother’s. He bowed a second time, lower, catching his breath. “No, honored Mother.” That was not quite true. He had scratches from Boji’s nails. But all the blood, the blood on his coat, the blood spattered over the baby crib and the lace, was from his mother’s bodyguard. “He is very tame, honored Mother, just frightened.”
“Well, he will go back to wherever you got him,” his mother said. “Now!”
“Honored Mother, one begs you will ask Father.” He needed to get Boji back to his cage. Urgently. Boji was starting to squirm, and he had a sort of a grip on Boji’s nape, but not a good one. He was afraid Boji might bite him if he were scared. “I shall put him up, now. He has a cage, a very strong cage. I was holding him in my hands when your servant—”
“You will get rid of that creature!”
He was appalled. “Excuse me, honored Mother,” he said, deciding that getting Boji away from the nursery was the first thing to do, and fast.
His fatherwould not send Boji away.
“Take that creature out of here,” his mother said, ordering herbodyguard.
“They will not!” he said. “Luca-ji. Jico-ji. They will not.”
“Excuse us,” Lucasi said politely and with a bow to senior Guild. “But we have contrary orders, and we respectfully appeal to the head of security staff.”
Lucasi was stalling. Cajeiri ducked and ran, with Boji squirming and ripping his lace to shreds, and Antaro and Jegari close with him, getting out the door. “Help Lucasi!” he said when they were in the hall. “I shall get Boji back in his cage. Call my father’s guard. Now! Do not fight them—get Lucasi back to the room.”
“Yes,” Antaro said, and turned off for the security office at a run. Jegari stayed with him. “I shall stand out here and not let anyone in,” Jegari said, as they came up on their own suite. “Lock the door, nandi.”
His room had no servant passages. He went inside and threw the lock on the door, then, hugging Boji inside his coat, went over to the cage, which had its door open and an egg and water inside. He very carefully extracted Boji from inside his coat—Boji had scratched his neck and chest, and it wasbleeding, and it stung, but the blood that was spectacular, thatwas from his mother’s bodyguard.
Boji went into the cage, dived for the perch and clung there, wide-eyed, with all his hair standing on end, and two gold eyes staring at him. Boji was so upset he was not even going for his egg.
“It is all right now,” he said. “We are safe. We are safe, Boji!”
But just then he heard footsteps outside, and he heard his mother’s guard telling Jegari in harsh tones that Jegari, being only a trainee, was wrong to be standing there and had better leave or get hurt.
And he heard Jegari telling them that they would have to move him, because he would not move.
He went to the door himself and yelled,
“The door is locked, nadiin, and I shall only open it when my fatherinstructs me to open it. Go away, or you will have to break the door and damage the paint, and my father will not approve of that!”
“Young gentleman,” the chief of his mother’s guard shouted back, “you are in the wrong in this matter! Obey your mother and open this door!”
“We shall not,nadiin!” He had never imagined being afraid in his own room. But it occurred to him in a terrible flash that Guild had been fighting Guild in the south, and that uniformed Guild had been shooting at him and at Great-grandmother in the basement of Najida, and who knew? Maybe his mother’s bodyguard were not who they were supposed to be. He was scared, his heart thumping hard, and he desperately wished he had a phone so he could call his father, or call his great-grandmother, or nand’ Bren or someone.He almost expected to hear shots break out, and he moved back from the door in case someone should try to take the lock out. No, he was not going to open that door. He edged aside, then thought of the very heavy table, and got behind it and pushed, struggling to move it across the floor. It screeched on the wood, and might scratch it.
“Young gentleman?” he heard from outside. “What are you doing in there?”
There was silence. He finished moving the table, sweat stinging in the scratches on his neck.
Then came his mother’s voice: “You are to open this door this instant, Cajeiri! I shall not put up with this sort of behavior! You are being disrespectful and disobedient!”
Boji shrieked. Cajeiri flinched and shouted back, “Go away!” and saw that, should the tall adults find a key and open the door, he could duck under the table and maybe get out the door past their feet, and maybe get out the front door of the apartment if he was fast enough and lucky.
But that would leave his bodyguard in trouble—and leave Boji to them, and he no longer believed Boji was safe or that they would not kill him. He had no idea what to do. He had no advice. And he was more and more scared.
“Young gentleman!” one of the bodyguards shouted. “Obey your mother!”
“Not until my father comes!” he said. “Go away! Call my father or call my great-grandmother!”
“Young gentleman,” his mother said, “you are disrespectful!”
“I am careful,” he said, finding his voice shaking a little. “Guild has tried to kill us, when we were out on the coast. So tell them go away. I will open the door and talk to you when my father is here.”
“Your father is in an important meeting right now! You are not permitted to be by yourself in your suite, which is one of the agreements under which you have it at all! And you are notpermitted to have that filthy animal tearing up the furniture!”