Today it was a great relief that it did work. Bren and his bodyguard boarded last, and as he turned toward the open lift door, his two valets, still outside, signaled they would wait for the next car.
The door shut. In the center of the car, next to him, were the dowager, Jase and Cajeiri, who were his height, and the youngsters, who were shorter, enclosed in a circle of Guild uniforms. Cenedi stood next to the control panel. The car immediately started to move, rising rapidly through all the many stories of warehouses and mechanicals that served the above-ground floors, not buttons available on their panel. The first number they reached was ground level, where the public had access. But nothing could stop a car under security lock. It kept rising past the second floor, slowed and stopped sedately at third level.
Home.
The doors opened. Cenedi nodded, Tano and Algini stepped out, and Bren did, into a tranquil place of antique, figured carpet runners, a broad hall with plinths and porcelains, tapestry hangings and rococo moldings, and more decorative niches and display nooks than there were doors. Luxury—and security interwoven. There were untraditional cameras that answered only to the residents’ security, and fed images to security stations inside the four apartments. Above that figured porcelain opposite was one.
And they could finally draw an easier breath. Bren waited as the rest of the party exited.
“Are we in a house?” young Irene asked in a subdued voice.
“This is just a hallway,” Cajeiri answered her quietly, and the dowager briskly tapped her cane for attention.
“Great-grandson, you and your guests will lodge with Lord Tatiseigi. You and your guests may walk easily now. We are out of danger. —Paidhi-ji, you can surely host Jase-aiji comfortably.”
“Aiji-ma.” Bren gave a sketch of a bow. Jase and his bodyguard he could manage easily, and Jase’s company would be more than welcome.
“We are quite exhausted,” the dowager said, paused for a moment, and brought her cane down smartly on a bare patch of marble floor, which sent echoes ringing. “So. We shall recover ourselves for the rest of the day. Individual staffs can see to our needs, shall they not, nandiin-ji? My grandson is aware, now, that we are here, and that a briefing will be forthcoming, such as we can arrange, but it will come from my junior bodyguard. One is certain one will come, too, from the paidhi-aiji. We shall not be offended if the paidhi-aiji should anticipate us in that matter.”
“Aiji-ma,” Bren said, and bowed a second time, pure reflex, while the thought went sailing through his head that the briefing was not necessarily to inform Tabini on things that Tabini had rather be able to deny. There might be action coming, and the dowager might use her rest to sit and give orders that might span the continent—but whatever they did in the next few hours, the operation would not involve the aiji’s very junior bodyguard. And the orders the dowager would give, involving forces here and there across the continent, might not be orders her grandson would hear about, until they had an outcome.
The members of her own staff that Ilisidi had stationed inside Tabini’s apartment—right down to the hairdresser the aiji-consort had requested—were another matter. Doubtless someone from that staff would find occasion to visit the aiji-dowager’s apartment in the next hour or so, bring the dowager current on questions it might not be politic for the dowager to ask Tabini-aiji, and receive instructions about which it might not be politic to tell Tabini-aiji, either.
He had his own questions about the part of their operation still hanging fire. And if there had been any conversation between the dowager and Lord Tatiseigi about lodging the children, he must have slept through it—but that was not a question he needed ask, now, either. He had his orders and a set of problems—Jase’s lodging, and Tabini’s information—in whatever order he could manage. Ilisidi held out her cane sideways, herding everyone in her own party toward the left, up-hall, and leaving Bren with his own aishid and with Jase.
“This way,” he said to Jase, and, with his bodyguard, led off toward his own door, down a considerable length of ornate and empty hallway.
6
It felt like the home stretch of a long, long race. Bren walked, aching in the knees, sighting on his own apartment’s doors, midway down the stretch of hall that dead-ended at Tabini-aiji’s door. He hitched the computer strap on his shoulder, putting another wrinkle in a coat that was already a disaster. Jase walked beside him.
“Quite something, this,” Jase said.
“They’ve done extensive remodeling of this floor since the coup. Quite a lot of remodeling at the aiji’s end. And mine. I now have a guest room—gift from the aiji; and you have to appreciate how precious space is, here. You and your two, you’ll have room enough—if they don’t move the parid’ja in on us. I truly hope they don’t. But they well could, and one can only apologize in advance.”
The hallway—this whole floor of the Bujavid—had been on its own systems since the coup, and was a complete darkness to the rest of the Bujavid. The dowager’s men had maintained the surveillance here in their absence, and the hallway itself was a secure area, at least as secure as the dowager’s own apartment. Ordinary lift cars couldn’t stop here without a key. There was no likelihood of trouble.
But he didn’t trust anything now, with everything that was rattling loose. He was, he thought, on his last legs, not quite reasonable, he said to himself. Peace and quiet? That wasn’t an option.
“I’m going to have to leave you on your own,” he said as they neared the door. “Just ask the staff for what you want. Food. A brandy. Anything. Kaplan and Polano should be along fairly soon, but don’t worry about them. The dowager’s men are with them.”
“Understood,” Jase said.
The doors opened before they reached them. His major domo Narani and Narani’s assistant Jeladi, likely alerted by Banichi or Jago via the ordinary systems, welcomed them into the foyer.
Home. Definitely. The door shut and now they were safe. The relaxation of tension in his bodyguard was more than palpable—he heard soft clicks as safeties went on firearms, and rattles as rifles went into a safer position for transit down narrow inner hallways. Bags of gear thumped down gently to the polished foyer floor.
And he so wished he could postpone everything, go to bed, let his aishid work on the problem, and wake up tomorrow with everything that was wrong in the world on its way to resolution.
But that wasn’t the way it had to work, and his bodyguard had had enough to handle in the last two days.
Others of the servants were standing in the inner hall, and in the sitting room, which opened out onto the foyer, all ready to help them with hand baggage, coats, clothing—food, if he wanted it.
“Jase-aiji will be our guest for a number of days, Rani-ji. His aishid, Kaplan and Polano—you remember them—will be up in a moment. If not, they may need assistance. We are exhausted beyond clear thinking, and Banichi has taken a wound.”