“Great‑uncle.” The bow was automatic, while his brain was racing. What was it? Was everything all right now? They were being let out of the cellar and offered lunch alone, with no grown‑ups.
But was the trouble over?
Great‑uncle and his bodyguard went ahead of them through the basement, headed up the stairs and left them with just his bodyguard for guides.
“What did he say?” Gene whispered urgently. “Jeri, what just happened?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know. Lunch, is all. If it were bad I think they’d want us to stay downstairs.” He hoped his bodyguard remembered the way out.
But they did. They went back through the rooms fairly quickly, the lights going on and off as they passed through, not too far behind Great‑uncle. They went upstairs and out the door, to a little alcove in the main hall. Great‑uncle and his guard were still ahead of them, on their way toward the sitting room, where one would easily bet Great‑grandmother was.
The breakfast room was a little distance away from that.
“Is that an all‑clear?” Jegari asked suddenly. He was looking at his bracelet, the same sort that most Guild wore.
“Yes,” Veijico said, looking at her bracelet. “Nandi, we are receiving again.”
· · ·
Kadagidi fortunes had certainly sunk today. That was clear in the bedraggled, soot‑stained person of the Kadagidi lord, who had to negotiate with intruders on his clan’s territory, in a bus sitting on his land.
“We do not surrender,” Aseida had said first, frayed and rattled as he was, once he stood aboard. “We appeal to the paidhiin to prevent damage to our estate. We are innocent of all offense!”
Ship‑paidhi. Jase was that.
Innocent , however, had been an interesting claim.
So was Aseida’s insistence on addressing Jase by his lesser, onworld title.
Let him, Bren had thought, showing him to the first of the seats, arranged as the first rows were, in facing pairs, with a let‑down table.
Let him spill whatever he wants of his thinking, his views, his presumptions.
He hadn’t let down that table. He wanted full view of Aseida’s hands. He had Jase sitting beside him. Kaplan and Polano had come aboard, and, unable to sit in the armor, they had taken their places again beside the driver, in front of the damaged windshield.
“We were betrayed,” Lord Aseida had said for openers. “We were forced by Murini‑aiji’s bodyguard. We never wanted the man’chi of that aishid. They attached to me when I was a child, and I had no choice in the matter.”
The account went on and on, somewhat incoherently, if interestingly.
It did follow one scenario they had surmised–that there had been an unusually strong Guild presence in the house before and during Murini’s sojourn in the Dojisigin Marid; that the bodyguard that had escorted the usurper into exile and died with him had not been Haikuti’s team, no, they had stayed constantly in the house, and, well, perhaps, Aseida thought, possibly had contact with others about the region, but they always had that.
Definitely Haikuti and that aishid had not gone down to the Marid with Murini, before the coup, nor had they conspicuously stood beside him in his ascent to power, though they had been physically with him during some of his administration.
But they had been Aseida’s aishid for years. How assigned? Clearly by Shishoji, who had held his office through more decades than that.
The records that had accumulated in the house during Murini’s tenure possibly still existed, among those they had confiscated within the Kadagidi estate.
But now they had, indeed, very interesting things pouring out: a Kadagidi lord, the very person involved, claiming that Haikuti had taken over the household, that Haikuti had effectively run the clan by threat and intimidation, possibly using Murini as a puppet–and that he, Aseida, was innocent as the spring rains.
The paidhi’s job, however, was a good deal easier than Aseida’s, who had to explain what the situation had been, a lot of it unlovely, and precisely how he was innocent.
“Do not accuse us,” Aseida said hotly, at one point. “We had no way to respond to you. It was you who elected to come onto Kadagidi land, with these men dressed as machines, it was you who called out my guard and blew a hole in an ancient house. Who is my neighbor to send humans and machines to attack us, on the charges that we aided an attack on Tirnamardi? You have fired without judgment and damaged historic premises! You have shattered treasures older than your presence on this earth! You had no right to come here and fire on us!”
“We were fired upon,” Bren said with careful patience.
“That is your word, paidhi, after you have killed all the witnesses! One side’s word is no proof before the law!”
“Is he saying we fired first?” Jase asked.
“That’s what he’s saying. He’s saying we can’t prove it legally, because we have no witness from his side surviving.”
Jase shook his head. “He’s wrong. The armor’s been recording everything. Audio. Video. Three‑sixty‑degrees and overhead, ever since they put the systems live, which was the moment we drove through that gate. Our regs say when we have weapons go live–we record it until they shut down.”
Bren drew in a deep breath. Smiled deliberately at Aseida. “Jase‑aiji notes that we have it recorded who fired first. Video, nandi. Video and audio. Just like television. You can slow it down and know exactly what happened first.”
Aseida’s face changed.
“And since we’re citing the law, nandi, let me remind you that when you attack, a person’s response may be at his level. I am the lord of Najida and Lord of the Heavens. Jase is a ship‑aiji. Your bodyguards fired on this bus. Twice. If Jase‑aiji had responded with everything he has, the damage, I assure you, would have been far more than a corner of your building and its front steps. As for my other office, as paidhi‑aiji, let me remind you I do not merely represent the offended parties in last night’s events: I represent Tabini‑aiji, who would observe, were he here, that you have placed yourself at considerable disadvantage in any dealings with your neighbors and indeed, with him . You have attacked the aiji‑dowager. You have attacked the aiji’s son, a minor child. You have attacked his guests, minor children, and citizens under Jase‑aiji’s protection. You have attacked your neighbor Lord Tatiseigi.”
“Not I! I had nothing to do with it! It was Haikuti! Haikuti did as he pleased! There was no way I could have prevented him!”
“You claim you were under duress?”
“Constantly.”
“Yet,” he said, “yet, lacking a corroborating witness, nandi, it is impossible to prove that you ever desired to go against these persons. Certainly at some point you made a very bad bargain with them, perhaps, indeed, to keep yourself alive and comfortable–”
“To keep my staff alive, nandi, and to preserve our house!”
“Yet do we know your staff themselves are pure, and will not turn on you? My aishid found them trying to destroy records in the security office, which, whatever the crisis, is rarely the job of domestic staff.”