A summons. Aircraft. People arriving by train. The Ajuri coming in this evening—relatives, and intimately concerned with their daughter Damiri. And now there was talk of Edi coming in. All this motion and commotion suggested that he had been wrong in his estimations. The thought that the aiji and his men could somehow melt back into the woods seemed less and less practical. Clearly the paidhi had not quite gotten the picture until now: He was not sure that Lord Tatiseigi entirely had it yet, but that word summons rang like a bell. Tabini was not here simply to meet the dowager and reclaim his son.
They sat here in the open now. And Atageini had become involved to the hilt. Taibeni had come in. The Ajuri were coming to their defense, and Dur, and others from the coast, if there was a bus left at the railhead to get them here this evening. Or worse, they might have to fight their way in past Kadagidi agents, if the attack renewed itself at dusk.
“There might be trouble at the train station, nandiin,” Bren said quietly, aware it was by no means the paidhi’s job to give the aiji defensive advice, but he lacked information: He wanted someone to think of these things, and let him know what in all hell the aiji was planning. “We removed a bus and left it in Taiben. One is by no means sure there are enough buses left at the station to serve.”
“An excellent point,” Keimi said: The bus in question was still capable of being moved, if Taiben could send it back.
“My father and his guard are armed,” Rejiri said, with a gesture toward the outside. “And there are plenty of buses and trucks here to bring them, nandiin.”
There were certainly plenty of Atageini vehicles which Tatiseigi might not particularly want shot full of holes but neither did they want their allies shot full of holes getting here, it was easier to move a few of them by the shorter, open country road.
“We can send buses,” Tabini said decisively, without so much as a glance at Tatiseigi, who sat glumly chewing his lip and perhaps recalculating the shooting match he was planning with his neighbors. “But the Kadagidi may have moved on the station.”
“One could take the plane up,” Cajeiri suggested, “and see what the Kadagidi are doing.”
Leave it to Cajeiri to think how to get that plane involved in the commotion.
“A dangerous venture,” Damiri said.
“But perhaps a useful one,” Rejiri said. “Aijiin-ma, one would gladly undertake it, observing all possible discretion, but the plane needs fuel.”
“What sort of fuel does it use?” Tabini asked.
It used what the trucks and buses used, it turned out.
“There must be a fuel station in the nearest town,” Rejiri said.
“The estate has its own tank,” Tatiseigi volunteered glumly, wonder of wonders. “And if we refuel this machine, you will keep an eye to the east, young sir, and advise us by radio what you see from up there, before nightfall.” A vague wave of the elderly hand, outer space and the air corridors being likely the same thing in Tatiseigi’s concept. “There may be a use for this thing.”
“By all means, nandi!” Rejiri said. All this meeting and conversation had left the new arrival standing practically in the doorway, assaulted with observations and questions with no time at all taken for tea or consultation—an outrageous haste by atevi standards. One could all but hear Ilisidi say, the thousandth reminder to Cajeiri, that gentlemen did their conversing seated.
But Rejiri was difficult to keep still and no one had insisted on tea.
And with very little more than that exchange of words, the young lord of Dur declared he would go fuel his plane immediately—if the lords would be so gracious as to give him leave to do that.
“My staff will assist, young Dur,” Tatiseigi declared, with a wave of his hand, and that unseemly haste was that. Off went the young lord of Dur with several of Lord Tatiseigi’s servants trailing him from the doorway, bound outside to provide the fuel, one supposed.
“Certainly a very forceful young gentleman,” Lord Tatiseigi said, as if a hurricane had just blown through the hall; and: “Tea, nadiin!” No nadiin-ji for his servants, not from this stiffly formal lord, an elderly gentleman who looked quite harried, quite disturbed, and, like all of them, very short of sleep. Tatiseigi might not be up with the times in technology, but very few had ever outfigured him in politics, and perhaps he, too, was rearranging his concept of Tabini’s intentions—all the while muttering: “Looking over neighbors’ borders. Buzzing over roofs. Not even time to sit down in decency to consult. Can a rifle shot possibly do damage to such a machine?”
“It can,” Tabini said. “And the young man very well knows it, one is quite sure. No, no tea for us, nandi. We are inundated with tea.
Lunch, however, would be welcome.”
“Indeed,” Tatiseigi said, clearly rattled, unaccustomed to being ordered in his own hall.
And somewhere in the swirl of servants and security in the general area, Cajeiri had left his chair, and was nowhere in the room. Bren became aware of it, leaped up and went to the door, where Banichi and Jago waited with the rest of the bodyguards.
“Cajeiri,” he said abruptly. “Banichi-ji.” That was all.
“Yes,” Banichi said crisply, and immediately left, doubtless having known the boy had left, and needing only an instruction.
No possible doubt where the boy had gone. To watch fuel being pumped into the plane. To watch buses rallied for a run to the train station, and—thank God he was with his young bodyguard—to be underfoot in all possible operations.
“Tell Cenedi,” Ilisidi said from her chair, cane poised before her, “that my great-grandson should not go within stone’s throw of that plane.”
“Cenedi-ji.” Bren was the one nearest the door. Cenedi, salt-and-pepper haired as his lady, was also among the bodyguards outside.
“One hears,” Cenedi said without his saying a thing, and left on the same mission as Banichi, to be absolutely sure where Cajeiri was when buses left or when planes took off.
Bren turned back to the room, somewhat easier about the boy, and realizing only then that he and the dowager had both just leaped into order-giving regarding the aiji’s own son, in the aiji’s and the consort’s presence and in front of witnesses.
Habit. Two years of habit. He was mortified.
Tabini wore the faintest of considering looks, and Damiri offered no expression at all. Bren gave a little bow, knowing that what he and the dowager knew about the boy’s habits and inclinations his own father and mother could only guess at this point, and the middle of Tatiseigi’s drawing room was no place to discuss the heir’s failings. They should have done what they had done; he only wished he could have been subtler.
Meanwhile at Rejiri’s urging, buses and trucks would be loading up with armed guards, themselves likely refueling and moving around out there, one could only assume. He took his seat again with the conviction that Banichi and Cenedi would keep the boy out from under the wheels. The plane would go up, and at least one bus or truck would go off into Taiben, to approach the train station, to come back this evening loaded with forces from Durc God knew how or when Ajuri planned to arrive, but things were definitely cooking here.
They only had to hope, in the process, that their unasked air support wandering the skies near Kadagidi territory didn’t provoke an answering escalation from the other side—take a look to the eastern border, indeed. A damned dangerous look, and, considering what he suspected Tabini was setting up here, and what the Kadagidi might be preparing to counter him, he worried about it going wrong.
But he wanted that information, too. He had spent two years and more in a transparent universe where people couldn’t sneak about behind bushes or hide behind hills. He longed to go outside and ask for current information from Tatiseigi’s Guild staff, who might more likely know what movements were happening on the other side—but in the same way farmers weren’t supposed to get involved in lords’ disputes, lords weren’t supposed to meddle in security.