It was ordinarily a tranquil, gracious routine of inquiry, staff approaching staff, arranging things in back corridors that doubtless existed for the suites in this grand hall, but not for this modest room. The attempt at formal inquiry and request of an audience lost a little more graciousness with the house ringing with hammers and voices of staff hurrying about in a mad rush. Shouts at that moment echoed in the hall outside.
“Yes,” Banichi said, with the same economy of motion, and completely understanding him.
Shortcuts. No laborious use of seals and exchange of message-cylinders, which he still lacked, a circumstance which could render a gentleman near incommunicado. He instead hoped to gain the aiji’s summons to him, approaching Tabini via the security network, disgraceful shortcut, for what had become an ungracious, breakneck situation under Lord Tatiseigi’s oh so proper roof. But one did as one could. Banichi immediately slipped away and out to the hall, sans written message, and was gone long enough for Bren to wonder where Jago was at the moment, and to look cautiously out the window to investigate one source of the hammering.
The repair of the stableyard’s eastern gate seemed to be the focus of a great deal of activity. Never mind the stable behind it had burned down. They needed fences to give the Atageini mecheiti a sense of territory, to keep them from challenging the Taibeni mecheiti—if one of the big bulls took it into his thick skull to start a fight, it could be very nasty indeed. At the moment, presumably, the hedges kept them apart, but those barriers only lasted until a mecheita decided to walk on through.
Jago came back.
He looked at her, lifted a brow in mild question regarding her business.
“One delayed, consulting with Cenedi,” Jago said.
“How is the dowager?”
“Quite well, nandi, though Cenedi himself is suffering somewhat.”
“Wounded?” He had not heard that.
“Minor, but an impairment in hand-to-hand. We discussed alternatives. Places of refuge to which we might retreat, if things grow chancy. One has a rather better notion of alignments in the region—some business the dowager gathered from her grandson.”
A very useful conference between those two, then. A notion how the political map lay, and what doors might welcome them, and what ones would not, as a next step after Atageini territory. But this was not a staff that liked the word retreat.
“One rather hopes the Kadagidi would have reconsidered their reception here,” he said, ”and at least delay for consultations.”
Consultations with their lord Murini, who was still sitting in Shejidan, at their last report, while his clan went at it hammer and tongs with the previously neutral Atageinic and now had outsiders coming in. Provoking a region-wide war ought to require at least some consultation with the self-proclaimed aiji.
“Couriers may have gone to the capital,” Jago said.
“Unfortunately, though the Kadagidi had an agent here, Lord Tatiseigi does not seem to have had particular success at installing his own among the Kadagidi.”
Of course not, Bren thought. Tatiseigi had spent all his best men infiltrating the paidhi’s household—and very good men, too, not to mention a better cook than he could otherwise have found. He was the great threat Tatiseigi had been keeping an eye on, not the neighboring clan who had been plotting against the stability of the aishidi’tat for as long as that entity had existed.
“One wishes we knew what would be the wise thing, Jago-ji.
Staying here much longer seems rash. The servants, however— Damiri-daja has affirmed she sent them.”
“So Cenedi said.”
“Damiri says Ajuri clan is coming in—for a familial visit in crisis, one supposes. And all the farmers and townsfolk out there arriving and picnicking, as if it were a local harvest fair— one worries about this situation, Jago-ji. One is very concerned for their safety.”
“Well we should,” Jago said. “But, understand, it makes a statement—one does wish you would stay farther from the window, Bren-ji.”
He moved. Instantly.
“The servants intend to install privacy screens,” he offered.
“Perhaps we should add them to the windows.”
A rich, soft chuckle. “Privacy screens indeed. After what the gentleman saw in the bath, nandi?”
“I greatly regret the embarrassment, Jago-ji,” he said. “I profoundly apologize.”
“For what possible offense, Bren-ji? And privation will not last.
Likely we shall indeed be leaving soon.”
“Where?”
“One can only guess,” Jago said. “As for the harvest fair out on the lawn, clearly the lord has encouraged it. He has met with these locals. He has praised them. He has sent out word.”
“Is that from Cenedi?”
“It might be.” The Guild kept its secrets. “Clearly Lord Tatiseigi wishes to rally the clans and meet his neighbors in force if they come in. Tabini-aiji has choices to make.”
“God.” The last in Mosphei’, but Jago understood him. Tatiseigi, whose equipment had nearly gotten them all killed, proposed to raise local war against the clan whose lord claimed Tabini’s office, pushing the aiji to move now or move on. “I have to talk to Tabini while we still have some means to print a file. I just sent Banichi to reach him.”
“Banichi was going downstairs.”
“Downstairs?” To find Tabini’s senior staff, was it?
Then Tabini was in conference, or his staff was, with Tatiseigi or his household. Perhaps Tabini was trying to talk Tatiseigi out of provoking a second round with the Kadagidi while things were still within the realm of negotiation and finesse.
The faint thrum of an engine, meanwhile, had barely intruded into his awareness. He had thought at first it was another bus coming up the front drive.
Then it seemed more like something else. And Jago had heard it, clearly. She seized his arm.
“An airplane, nandi.”
Air attack. She wanted to pull him to cover. His heart doubled its beats. “My computer. Above all else, my computer.”
He broke away and rushed to get it, Jago right on his heels, and when he had it she seized up a heavy bag from the same stack: armament. Tano and Algini dived in, arming themselves likewise.
The plane buzzed over the roof to a rattle of small arms fire.
No bombs dropped. The plane flew away and sounded as if it reached a limit and perhaps turned to come back somewhere over the east meadow.
“That plane came from the west,” he said; the west was not from the Kadigidi side of things. And since the engine sound was still far away, he darted back out of the bath to risk a quick look from the window, Jago and Tano and Algini in anxious attendance.
It was a very small plane, a three-seater at most. It looked to be landing on the broad meadow of the eastern mecheita pasture. Its fuselage was yellow striped with blue.
“Dur!” he exclaimed, seeing those colors, remembering a young and determined pilot who had scared the hell out of a scheduled airliner. “Jago-ji, come with me! Tano! Algini! Call security! Stop them from shooting at that plane!”
He was still encumbered with his computer. He ran back and shoved it into the pile of baggage, not even knowing whether the landing had succeeded against the small arms fire that renewed itself. He headed straight for his foyer and the door of the suite, ahead of Jago, for once. She overtook him, seized his arm with one hand, and opened that door to the outer hall, by no means stopping him, but not letting him dash recklessly ahead of her.
“Tano is calling Banichi,” she said, as they walked double-time down the upstairs hall toward the stairs. They were alone in the upper hallway—servants might have ducked for cover or run to windows within unoccupied rooms, but there was no sign of anyone as they reached the stairs and hurried down.