“Keep your mind on business, young sir. Consider your staff, and restrain them from such moves. This is no game. This is never a game.”
“Yes, Banichi-nadi.” Meekly. Very softly. The plane buzzed in the distance, meanwhile, coming about for a landing, and Cajeiri did not even look toward that window to see.
“Excellent that you stopped,” Bren said, deciding such contrition deserved a little praise, ever so little, since a small dose was often overdose with this lad—but Banichi’s tone of voice would have chilled the dead. “House defenses are up, young gentleman, but more, defenses are up which you never saw used on the ship, things which might take a hand or a foot off. Jago will explain them for you and your staff, if you will attend her. In the meanwhile, one assumes the young gentleman from Dur is landing safely, if prematurely, and might have news for us. Tano-ji,” Tano had just come into the room, from the bath. “Will you inquire? And ask nand’ Rejiri to accept our hospitality in these premises immediately, if he cannot penetrate the family discussion below.”
“Nandi,” Tano said, and went off on his own errand, with— one hoped the boy noted the fact—a signaled coordination with his partner, who threw switches on a pocket remote.
“How shall I warn my bodyguard, nandi? Might I please go down the hall to advise them?”
Clearly thinking farther than himself and farther than the moment, now, twice in one half hour. And oh, so polite.
“Jago herself will go and advise them. It is an excellent idea, young sir, but security should handle security.”
The boy was getting the picture, and had a good head on his shoulders, which might ensure it lastingly stayed on his shoulders.
He stayed still, touching nothing, going nowhere, watching while Banichi did a walkaround tour of the windows and their precautions.
Meanwhile, switches had to be flicked off and reset again as Jago went out, then came back with Jegari, Antaro, and the all young company’s meager luggage—Jago settled that burden into the front cubby of a room—bringing with them, one noted, a bowl of seasonal fruit tucked into Antaro’s open carry-bag, a welcome little amenity which the forest bred youngsters did not leave behind in their transfer of residence.
The incoming luggage—saddlebags, in the case of the Taibeni youngsters—settled with their bags, the fruit bowl went onto the hall table, and the young trio followed Jago’s quick and thorough lecture, this time with embellishments from Cajeiri, who was a very quick study, in the dire things he had heard from Banichi.
There was, however, no Rejiri. The young man had not even entered the house to report, but had quickly gone off in a bus, so Tano said on his return from scouting. The contingent from Dur was about to reach the train station, the train coming in full bore, and they needed transport and guidance immediately— if not outright defense.
“The folk from the coast are coming in with Dur,” Tano reported, “by the same train, and with that group, notably, nandi, Adaran and Desigien.”
The fishing village where they had made their landing on the continent and the railhead village from which they had continued their journey, villages which had already risked a great deal in the dowager’s support.
“One should remember them,” Cajeiri said solemnly, with no one prompting.
“Indeed,” Bren said.
Two more contingents added to the vulnerable lot already sitting here, a target for Kadagidi mayhem as the sun declined in the sky.
Brave folk, as they had already proved. He was far from easy in his mind. Finesse, Jago had said. But there might be gunfire at the train station in very short order, and there might be ambush on the way—God knew where it would end up. Rejiri had apparently scouted things out, including, perhaps, the position of forces trying to control access to the Atageini train station, and then opted to ground the plane and go back by bus—a good move, Bren thought.
If he had appeared over Kadagidi forces, they might have claimed illicit attack, and that could escalate what was already in progress.
So while Jago instructed three eager youngsters in the meticulous details of avoiding disaster—and specifically cautioned them against trying to bypass Algini’s black box device, which involved skills the Guild did not divulge to novice security and an inquisitive princeling—Bren found no further use for himself at all, except to get out his computer and attempt to condense a report, paring thousands of pages down to essentials, in the hopes that if they did have a quiet night, and if Cajeiri did get his great-grandmother’s ear, Tabini might have time to look at it this evening.
No phone connnections to Mosphiera, not from this house. He had his modem, but without the landlines, it was no use to him; he mortally regretted that the communication network had never gotten beyond Mogari-nai’s solitary dish. He wondered how good the informal network was, the illicit radio traffic across the straits, whether that had maintained any mainland contacts, and consequently whether President Shawn Tyers knew what kind of a mess he was in, and that Tabini had knowingly put himself in a target zone? Yolanda Mercheson, his liaison with the spacefarers, was sitting over there on the island, in a hotel beside the landed shuttle, perhaps having been clever enough during his absence to have tried to create such links, but she had not made contact with him if they existed. At the moment, she was still waiting to relay information to the station, and he couldn’t tell her what was going on, either—though the increasingly massive traffic jam out there might by now be seen in orbit, who knew? The station had been on the verge of deploying observation satellites with very good optics, but that project, once certain hidebound humans and atevi had gotten wind of it, had bogged it down in security concerns on both mainland and island. Had it ever happened? One assumed if it had gotten into operation the captains up there would have given him suitable equipment, knowing the situation on the mainland. One assumed— Well, what the station knew or could see or gather from clandestine networks or doggedly determined spies in rowboats was not his problem, at the moment. Tabini was. Tabini’s gathering force was.
Tabini’s highly protective guard was.
“What has the dowager’s staff been able to tell Tabini’s guard?”
he asked Tano, as the one of his staff who at least looked unoccupied. “What success have you had passing information to them?”
But Tano answered: “Algini would know better, nandi,” and quietly replaced Algini in control of the black box, freeing Algini to come and confer with Bren.
“What information has Cenedi relayed to Tabini’s staff on our mission?” he asked, for starters. “And what are they saying?”
Algini hunkered down by his chair and, staring into space in the manner of a man recalling minute detail, spilled the essentials, an amazing flow, almost a chant.
And all coherently organized, more the marvel, carrying the agreements, the persons present at the negotiations, the representations made on both sides, exactly as he would have outlined it—though not the reassuring content he would have wished. The aiji’s guard had given no reaction to news that there were more foreigners out in space, and as to what the dowager had said to Tabini himself, only Tabini’s staff had witnessed that—and Tabini’s security staff was not talking to them.
After all these years, he was still amazed at the detail, the precise picture of who had been standing where and overheard what. He began, in some despair, to fold his computer away. The essentials had come out. Tabini had not wanted his report.
His movement interrupted the flow. Algini, rare gesture, touched his hand, preventing him. “Our accounts are necessarily missing some detail, nandi.”