Mother was telling him how strong Seimiro was, and how she had to be watched, because she could wriggle right off her blanket, and how even now she was trying to turn over.
It was a very small beginning on misbehavior. Maybe she was doing her best.
But it was going to be forever until she could break free.
She was going to need encouragement.
And that would not make his mother happy. But it might rescue his sister, and make her much happier in her life.
“To bed, young gentleman,” his father said, which was, given the way he was thinking, a very welcome escape.
· · ·
Bren had barely had the chance to change his coat for an old favorite, and his traveling boots for comfortable house wear.
Staff, absent any order to restrain themselves on his return, had prepared a meal from which nobody had to refrain, not even his bodyguard, on this rare occasion of universal peace and celebration. Supani and Koharu arrived with the luggage cart and, on orders, the cart and its crates simply stood blocking the foyer, while the hard-working pair mingled and exchanged gossip they’d brought from Najida and Kajiminda. Bren was glad to see it.
Staff asked no questions of him personally. But one felt obliged to render some sort of account about recent events, the young gentleman’s guests, and about nand’ Jase—since they had all been guests on the premises at one time and another.
“The children,” Bren said, “are very grateful for their visit. They are back in space, headed for the station. They learned how to ride, they sailed out into the straits, they visited Najida village. They did everything we could think of for them to do.” He realized the staff had not heard about the new window at Najida, they had not seen the new wing about to be roofed—so he made a far longer report than he had intended, finding his voice a little thready by the time he finished. But staff provided him another glass of wine to keep him going, and it was very pleasant to sum up a thoroughly happy several weeks.
“And there are letters,” he remembered to say: he had brought a whole bundle of them, from the families and neighbors of most of his staff—letters that would make the rounds to everybody, because those who were not from Najida village or estate still had ties there. Letters from home began to go the rounds: a wedding, the birth of a new cousin, a trip to the Township—
And once the letters came out, then there was the gift crate to open. Staff at Najida had sent various items to staff here in the Bujavid. There were gifts, sweets of all sorts, shared all around.
“Rani-ji,” Bren said quietly to Narani, in a breathing space, “is there any word from the aiji? Should I go there this evening?”
“The aiji has just sent word that you may rest, nandi, and he will see you tomorrow, unless there is some urgent news.”
“None.” He was vastly relieved. He wanted to get his thoughts organized on paper before he forgot some important detail, and, God, the prospect of sleeping a little late in the morning was—
“The aiji-dowager,” Narani added, “has invited the paidhi-aiji to breakfast.”
The dowager’s breakfasts were crack-of-dawn.
“Thank you, Rani-ji.”
Well, his staff would have gotten him to the dowager’s breakfast somehow, even if he had not asked that fatal question. Staffs managed such things and essential people turned up where they needed to be, on time, appropriately dressed.
But with that appointment in the morning, one more glass of wine tonight was not going to be a good idea.
“Beyond that matter,” Narani said, “there seems nothing unexpected. Lord Topari is surely out of message cylinders: he has used five. Most people know you have not been in the capital. So does he, one is certain, but he keeps sending.”
Topari, the mountain lord. The railroad matter Ilisidi was promoting. Lord Topari had a way of writing, sending, then thinking of an amendment. It was almost worth reading the letters in reverse order, if the letters themselves weren’t as internally confusing as they tended to be, each referring to those preceding.
“No actual emergencies?”
“One thinks not, nandi.”
The rest of the messages, then, were just ordinary business awaiting his return. And he trusted Narani’s assessment. Message cylinders bore clan heraldry and personal seals. Narani would have done a good sorting of them. Narani would have notified him and read him a particular message by phone or couriered it to him at Najida had anything truly earthshaking come in.
Breakfast. At dawn. God.
He wondered if he should go to his office and try to put together the initial report for the dowager.
But he decided otherwise. Tomorrow before breakfast. Which meant getting up well before the crack of dawn.
More pizza appeared. Wine flowed. And gossip did, with every scrap of news from those letters out of Najida and Tirnamardi.
His valets entertained the company with accounts of the children’s doings.
And there was, here in the Bujavid, a new rumor as of yesterday—that, while the lordship of the Kadagidi was still unfilled, Aseida, the former lord, had just taken a new appointment, as assistant manager in a spinning mill in Hasjuran—Lord Topari’s holding—in the mountains, at the ragged edge of civilization.
No power. Definitely a chance to use his managerial skills on the independent-minded Hasjurani. A work schedule with very long hours. And no place to spend any graft if he could come by it.
That was fairly satisfying. It was the dowager’s doing, he very strongly suspected, and very likely would find mention at breakfast.
He did need to warn Topari off that acquaintance, no matter how Aseida might try to leverage a meeting.
If Aseida himself had any sense, he could still redeem his mistakes. He was young. He had an education surpassing any in Hasjuran. By the time he had gray in his hair, he might have realized he had once had other choices, and should have taken them. He would have a life of should-have and could-have, and one had very little faith he would someday achieve awareness of should and could.
He might, however, develop useful skills at maintaining looms.
· · ·
Bren meditated on his own should-haves, abed, in the dark, on that one glass of wine to the worse, that one last measure of self-indulgence before duty cut in.
He definitely should not have courted a hangover for the morning. He should have said no.
But he had gotten involved in conversation. It was so pleasant to be home.
He’d written reports that worried him.
But sometimes it was his job to keep secrets, to do the worrying. And think of solutions.
The door opened, admitting a sliver of light from the hall. And a shadow.
Welcome. Very welcome, too, that intrusion. He and Jago had been lovers for years. Being just down the hall from a number of youngsters with their own very alert junior security team had curtailed any getting together in the last month.
They were back home.
With no youngsters.
At long last.
6
Breakfast with the aiji-dowager was, even in warm weather, a chilly proposition, and nerves didn’t help. Ilisidi’s apartment not only had a row of windows, scarce luxury in the historic Bujavid—it had a balcony adjoining the breakfast room, and the dowager, an Easterner from the high mountains, always preferred to breakfast on that balcony in any conditions short of a blizzard.
It meant wearing a well-insulated coat, and one of the bullet-proof vests, not for fear of incidents on this particular morning, but because the vest was another way of keeping one’s core warm.