Not so Cajeiri, who now boiled up the steps with Jegari in close attendance, right on the old lord’s heels. Cajeiri brushed past the second lord, past the old man, right to the top of the steps and the landing, to plant himself and his young Taibeni bodyguard between Ajuri clan and Tatiseigi’s front door.
“Outrageous! Outrageous action, sirs!” Did one hear the aiji-dowager’s tones ringing in that young voice? Bren was appalled, and hastened upward to try to patch up matters, hopeless as it seemed.
The lords of the Ajuri had stopped in anger and startlement, and perhaps, in that half-heartbeat, both of them had figured out that the child on the steps, Taibeni guard and all, was not a local Atageini—a surmise a young boy’s presence near the paidhi-aiji might instantly have suggested to the quick-witted. But Cajeiri was not through.
“Shall the paidhi-aiji have an apology, nandiin?” Direct quote from his great-grandmother, a question directed at the young gentleman, not once, but several times, at key intervals in their voyage. Bren stood stock still, but gathered the presence to bow profoundly as the Ajuri swung a collectively outraged look in his direction. “He had better have it!” Cajeiri said. “Now!”
“Nandiin,” Bren said in a low voice, and with a deep bow.
“Is this Damiri’s son?” the old man snapped. “Is this rude young person my great-grandson?”
“I am my father’s son, and the aiji-dowager’s great-grandson,”
Cajeiri said, head high, eye to eye with his uncle and great-grandfather, whom he omitted from the genealogy. “And my mother is inside, and my father, and my great-uncle, and my great-grandmother the aiji-dowager. All of them esteem the paidhi very highly.”
“Well, we see all around us the result of that policy,” the old lord said, and shoved past, brushing past the boy and his guard, this time with no excuse of ignorance.
“Jegari!” Cajeiri snapped, and, Oh, my God, Bren thought, and moved to prevent a weapon being drawn, but not faster than Banichi and Jago, not faster than the Ajuri bodyguard— while young Jegari, do him credit, had only put his body between Cajeiri and the indignity of being shoved aside by his own great-grandfather.
Atageini Guildsmen, cooler heads and uninvolved, had by that time frozen, standing stock still in confrontation, blocking their doorway to access as the Ajuri lords reached the upper landing. The intrusion ran right into the roadblock.
“You will not lay hands on my lord, sir,” Jegari pursued the Ajuri from behind, in a voice very quiet, and full of dignity, despite the fact it was a young, high voice, and he was not Guild, nor remotely a match for those tall, black-clad individuals in the old man’s company who were.
“Truce,” Banichi said, shoving between, confronting the five Ajuri Guildsmen face to face, and a head taller than four of them. “Truce.
Let all pass. This is best settled inside.”
“Open the doors!” the Ajuri lord demanded, which did nothing to convince the Atageini guards, who continued to stand in his path.
Diplomacy seemed the civilized recourse, and being the only diplomat on scene, Bren moved very quietly up a step or two, bowed, said, “May one suggest,” as the Ajuri lords simultaneously turned a burning look his way. “This is a sorry misunderstanding, ”
Bren said, ever so quietly, and, not giving way in the least, “and one regrets having been a provocation to it. You have grown considerably, young sir, and you have borrowed your clothes from staff, so clearly your own kin failed to know you. Your great-grandfather has had a very tiring, very dangerous trip.” A deep, collected bow to the old lord, with absolutely no hint of his own outrage and the host of other feelings he had no business to let well up into his job—tiring trip, hell! He’d lay his own and Cajeiri’s against it, hour for hour, and throw in the last two years as well.“Some very reasonable people consider the paidhi-aiji at fault for his advice to your father. That is solely for your father to judge.
But your estimable great-grandfather and your uncle have surely come here at great trouble to support your mother, nonetheless, young sir, and in supporting her, they have come to support you, as well. Do consider that, and let them pass.”
The old man had gone quite impassive, somewhat recovering his breath and his dignity, and one would have to have known both gentlemen, the older and the younger, to know what emotions were actually going on behind those faces. There was a lengthy pause, all the Ajuri staff and luggage-bearing servants gone almost as expressionless. A far-traveling human could quite lose that knack of impassivity, in close shipboard society—but it was vital he recover that skill in himself, and he had to encourage the boy, whose face was still like a thundercloudc the boy who, one had to reckon, in two years of shipboard life, only his great-grandmother had ever sharply reined in.
“True,” the old lord said darkly, as if it were a bad taste in his mouth to agree with the paidhi in anything at all. “Altogether true.” The younger, the boy’s great-uncle, still glowered.
“Great-grandfather.” A little scowling bow, but thank God the dowager’s training had sunk in more than skin deep. She had seen to it the boy had the social reflexes to take an adult hint and make that gesture, without which, at this moment, things could only have gotten worse.
“Grand-nephew.” A bow, finally, from the second lord.
“Great-uncle.” A second proper bow, finally a blink in that confrontational stare. “But we say again, you must respect the paidhi-aiji, great-uncle.”
“Nand’ paidhi.” It was not a happy face the second Ajuri lord turned in his direction: The expression was still completely impassive, and Bren returned the infinitesimally slight bow with measured depth, his own expression under rigid control now, not ceding anything but an agreement to civilized restraint on both sides.
The Guild, meanwhile, on all sides involved, had at no moment relaxed, and did not ease their stance in the least until Cajeiri directed his great-grandfather to the doors and the Atageini guards deemed the situation settled enough to let the lot of them into their lord’s house.
In they went, past workmen noisily sawing away at a piece of timber and shedding sawdust onto their heads. That stopped. There was embarrassed silence in the scaffolded heights, and the Ajuri marched on through, with Cajeiri behind them.
Bren followed, Banichi and Jago on either side of him, still alert, past the damaged lily frieze, the rest of the group having ascended the slight rise onto the main floor, where hammering likewise gave way to silence.
The boy had called on his bodyguard to deal with his uncle. That single sharp word still had Bren’s nerves rattled. “Perhaps one should advise Ismini and Cenedi,” he said to Banichi and Jago under his breath as they hastened up the steps, and Jago immediately took the steps two at a time, skirting around the group in an effort to reach the aiji’s and the aiji-dowager’s bodyguards—before the collective situation reached the drawing room.
Bren climbed the steps behind the cascading calamity.
“Well managed, nandi,” Banichi muttered, treading beside him.
“One can only regret to have placed my staff in an awkward position,” he murmured, echoes of footfalls hiding their voices.
“Your staff has absolutely no regret in that regard,” Banichi said.
Banichi’s and Jago’s steadfastness was the only warmth in a world gone suddenly much colder. And it posed a weight of responsibility. He wondered if he had the personal fortitude to approach the drawing room door at the moment, following the Ajuri entry into that conference. Or if it was wise at all to do so, risking more confrontation.
But Jago was beside that door, waiting for him among the bodyguards posted outside—now numbering Ajuri among them, the lords having gone inside—and Jago caught his eye with a look that said she had delivered her message and was going to keep her station out here.