Lucasi stared at him, mouth slightly open. And the eyes tracked, locked.

“You cannot see it with myperspective,” Bren said, “but surely, nadi, you will have observed that the young lord, despite being the aiji’s son, is nottraditional in his thinking.”

Something clicked. One thought so, at least. Lucasi’s face looked a peculiar shade.

“Think on it,” Bren said.

“Nandi,” Lucasi said, “give me the chance. You can. I will notfail you.”

At doing what? one wondered. Something had just ticked over, perhaps; but he wasn’t wired to feel it—he never let himself expect to be, even if he’d just tried to reason down an atevi line of thought.

But in this mass movement of forces, in the fall of Targai, in Geigi’s succession to the clan lordship, in the Edi accession to a lordship, and the maneuvering of that truck, a deliberate challenge from the Marid, if the boy was not lying—in all of this, hestill had an objective. Barbwas nowhere in the aiji’s plans, and not that consequential in Mospheira’s, or Shejidan’s, or even the Marid’s. She was a silly woman. Nobody who’d taken her could communicate with her, and that meant her value was only as a provocation. She was disposable, unless somebody knew what Toby was; and higher and higher up the chain of command, somebody might realize what they had, which would make two governments realize both she andToby had become expendable—give or take the annoyance that would be to the paidhi-aiji.

And the paidhi’s not being a warlike office, neither was he on duty, once they had gotten Geigi into Targai, removed Pairuti, and taken thatstronghold out of Machigi’s control. He was dismissed from usefulness, at the moment, and hehad a promise he had made.

“You will obey my aishid,” he said, “on your life, Lucasi, from this point on. Where do you think they were going?”

“The main road. Southeast.”

Toward Taisigi territory.

“We had best move,” Banichi said, looking Bren’s way. “If you wish to pursue the lady’s kidnappers, nandi, best Jago and I go, best we move fast and get light transport from the aiji’s forces.”

That was sensible. That was the way it classically ought to work. Unlike the situation in which Lucasi had left his young lord, he was in a now-allied house, with two of his aishid left, and surrounded by the aiji’s forces, as safe as he would be in Najida.

But Banichi and Jago alone—to take on the Marid, and add themselves to the list of the young fool’s mistakes?

“Take some of the aiji’s forces with you,” he said.

“We cannot, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, and the cannotwas the word meaning are not of sufficient rank.

“Then can I?” he asked, and Banichi’s face betrayed a little reluctance to answer.

“Can I?” he asked again, and Banichi said: “Officially, yes, Bren-ji.”

“Find out from their officer how many I can detach.”

“You must go with the party,” Banichi said, “to have that authority, and that is not advisable, Bren-ji.”

“ Not advisableis spread thickly over this entire situation, Banichi-ji,” he said. “We will take the bus, and a good number of the aiji’s men, if we can arrange that. Speed is of some use. We do notwant to enter Taisigi territory.”

“Nandi,” Banichi said, and turned and went out to the hall. Lucasi bowed deeply and, at Banichi’s nod, left with him.

Which left Jago standing there with, by now, Tano and Algini, Jago with a profoundly unhappy look.

“I have promised nand’ Toby,” Bren said. “Jago-ji, we bring Barb back for him. For no other reason.”

She seemed to find something ironically amusing in that, God knew what. “Understood, Bren-ji.”

In a moment Banichi came back from the hall with one handsign for his partners.

Even Bren could read that one. It said, “Ten. Affirmative.”

19

« ^ »

The house was looking different, bare, the way it looked when mani was packing to change residences.

Which was somewhat true. They had all moved to the basement, starting with transporting nand’ Toby downstairs. Staff got one of the tall, paneled screens from the sitting room and padded it all about with sheets and pillows, and then used it to carry nand’ Toby down the steps, himself gently tied to the screen—Cajeiri had watched the process, dutiful to his promise to nand’ Bren, and thought it scary, especially where the stairs turned, but they made it safely. Nand’ Toby was not supposed to walk and he was not supposed to be excited, and that process did not violate either, because mani’s physician, who supervised, had given nand’ Toby a good dose of sedative for the procedure. Cajeiri thought it a very good thing, and he was very glad they had not dropped him.

And next came the job of moving mani downstairs.

And since the physician had promised to stay with nand’ Toby for the next hour or so, Cajeiri took Jegari and Antaro and went to help move Great-grandmother.

Mani was not enthusiastic about going. In fact she vowed she was not going until trouble was proven to be on its way, or possibly until after trouble arrived. So all the servants were allowed to do was to get together Great-grandmother’s wardrobe and take that down. It was expensive, and bulky, and it all had to be safely hung.

So that went down, boxes handed from servant to servant, because it would have been indecent for mani’s garments to be displayed on their way. They would be taken into storage, and they would be unpacked, and readied for wearc

Granted mani ever consented to go down the stairs at all, which not even Cenedi could persuade her to do, yet.

“You truly should, mani,” Cajeiri said very cautiously.

“Hush!” mani said. And that was that. Cajeiri felt his ear smart even across the room.

So he took himself and Antaro and Jegari out into the hall again to see the stairs clogged with downbound packets of mani’s baggage.

Immediately after those, of course, all the historic pieces in all the rooms had to go down—and then all the spare storerooms were filled, so the servants had to move out all the food, boxes, and jars and sacks of it, from other storerooms and take that up into the kitchen upstairs and the kitchen downstairs, so one aisle of each was filled with supplies clear to the rafters, and canisters were set on the cabinets and the second and third stoves in the main kitchens. It was an impressive lot of food. There certainly seemed no danger of them starving.

Then the most fragile porcelains and the hangings had to go downstairs into all the storage they had just cleared. So did all the handmade draperies, which had to be taken down, and the hand-knotted carpets, which had to be rolled up, exposing the stone and wood flooring that one never saw except around the edges: it was a whole new Najida. There was one manufactured carpet, in the dining hall, which staff said just had to take its chances. But every one of the porcelains had to be individually padded up in pillows—there were a lot of those—and bedded down with the folded hangings. The ancient tea set had to go down, specially: it had a box of lacquered wood.

And then the historic furniture in the sitting room had to go down. Ramaso was really, really clever at telling how to stack it like a puzzle, and with padding between surfaces, so it took up far less space than seemed likely.

Everybody had a cold lunch: Great-grandmother readily agreed that that would do for her; but Cook said he was working on hot soup for supper, along with more cold bread and some pickle: it would be an odd kind of supper, but Cajeiri personally hoped they would all get to eat it in peace and that nand’ Bren and nand’ Geigi would be back in the morning, and most of all that his father’s Guild would sort things out and kick the Marid troublemakers clear back to their own towns. He had seen enough of people shooting up places in his life: he was out of all curiosity how that went. He hoped if people were going to be shot at that his father’s men did all the shooting, this time, and that nobody from Great-grandmother’s guard got involved, and most of all that if there was going to be more shooting on Najida grounds, they did all the shooting far out beyond the gardens, where nothing that belonged to nand’ Bren would get broken.