“Get to the house, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, and only then did the full range of possibilities occur to him. Rifles were out. Guns were drawn, all facing that bus across the hedge.
This is insane, Bren thought, hurrying Cajeiri and his escort up the house steps. Surely no Kadagidi invader would dare.
But he climbed, and cast a look back only when he had reached the top of the steps. The errant bus had stopped, just on the other side of the hedge.
It had stopped, under a hundred guns, and a lordly passenger was debarking in considerable indignation.
“Uncle will not be pleased with them for parking on the lawn,”
Cajeiri said, “whoever did that.”
To say the least, uncle would not be pleased.
But more than the untoward incursion of the bus, he had the sudden image of all those vehicles on the driveway, constrained by the hedges on either side, attempting to move under hostile fire. Or trying to evade some vehicle carrying explosives across that same lawn.
Folly, his own sense said. He was sure Banichi and Jago saw the same.
But this bus at least had brought only another set of passengers, servants, bodyguards, and baggage.
“Come inside,” Bren said, laying a hand on the young gentleman’s shoulder. “Here is far too exposed. We are sure they are safe, but this is long enough for—”
“Those are Ajuri colors!” Cajeiri said suddenly, and neither pointed, that dreadful human gesture, nor raised his voice too high as he indicated the bus, the self-important arrival that had come in on the lawn. “That will be my great-grandfather and my uncle on my mother’s side that just ran over uncle’s grass.”
Ajuri clan. Well, Damiri had indicated they would be here by evening. And the sun had entered the last third of the sky. Ajuri had pushed it, and come a little early, perhaps in fear of traveling close to dark.
“Then I suppose we shall wait for them,” Bren said, from their vantage on the steps. They did seem safe. The plane and its noise had vanished, the outraged Taibeni had quieted the mecheiti, rifles and guns were put away, and the bus had by now disgorged a collection of staff and, behind the first lord, an elderly man who was very likely the aiji of Ajuri clan, Damiri’s grandfather. The first to alight, the younger gentleman of note, might well be Damiri’s uncle, second highest lord. There were a couple of other aristocrats, and a collection of still younger individuals, including young ladies.
The middle tier of aristocrats were all carrying hunting rifles, some of them flashing gold baroque ornament on the stocks, and with ammunition cases in evidence, quite the martial addition; but more to be feared, black-uniformed Guild security moved around them, watchful and bearing automatic weapons, and not at all favoring the armed Taibeni in their lords’ vicinity. In the background, a few harried domestic staff began to hand suitcases out of stowage, a pile which grew and grew. The Ajuri, a burgeoning small platoon of them, had every intent, it was clear, of claiming lodgings in the housec suitcases and staff and all.
Indeed, it might be a reasonable expectation, under ordinary circumstances. They had certain rights of approach, being Damiri’s relations, with Tabini in residence.
But Tatiseigi, the boy was right, would have different thoughts.
They were already limited in space. Tirnamardi’s upstairs had suffered in the attack. The staff and the boilers were already taxed to the limit.
Perhaps they should at least wait and try to slow the advance, and put the overhasty Ajuri in a calmer frame of mind. Their position on the steps was sheltered by the house, by the presence of Banichi and Jago, and the new arrivals pushed their way through the shattered hedge with some dispatch, weaving through the barrier of parked trucks, baggage and staff following, in evident intent to reach the house quickly. The elderly gentleman had taken command and walked ahead of the rest, in no mood to wait.
Damiri’s grandfather. Bren searched his memory for the name.
Damiri’s uncle, a handsome fellow, was named Kadiyi, Bren recalled, out of the depths of his memory: He walked second. The old lord, the one who looked to have swallowed vinegar, was Benati, Bejadi, or some such.
Cajeiri descended to the midsteps landing, a little to the fore, and bowed properly as the old lord came up the steps, but the old man paid his young kinsman not a scrap of notice— climbed, in fact, right past him. The second lord did the same, to Cajeiri’s indignation, and up the steps they came, head-on toward Bren.
“You!” the old man said. In Ragi, that address was inestimably rude. “Foreigner! Out of our way, damn your impudence!”
“Honored sir,” Bren said. Clearly he had made a mistake in delaying to welcome the arrivals—there was no way in all the world the old man mistook him for anyone else on the planet, and clearly the old man meant exactly what he said. And finding it prudent and politic to let the insult slide off for the moment, and let Tabini-aiji and Tatiseigi deal with this brusque advance, Bren gave a slight bow and moved aside, cueing Banichi and Jago to let the affront pass, outraged as they might be.
Not so Cajeiri, who now boiled up the steps with Jegari in close attendance, right on the old lord’s heels. Cajeiri brushed past the second lord, past the old man, right to the top of the steps and the landing, to plant himself and his young Taibeni bodyguard between Ajuri clan and Tatiseigi’s front door.
“Outrageous! Outrageous action, sirs!” Did one hear the aiji-dowager’s tones ringing in that young voice? Bren was appalled, and hastened upward to try to patch up matters, hopeless as it seemed.
The lords of the Ajuri had stopped in anger and startlement, and perhaps, in that half-heartbeat, both of them had figured out that the child on the steps, Taibeni guard and all, was not a local Atageini—a surmise a young boy’s presence near the paidhi-aiji might instantly have suggested to the quick-witted. But Cajeiri was not through.
“Shall the paidhi-aiji have an apology, nandiin?” Direct quote from his great-grandmother, a question directed at the young gentleman, not once, but several times, at key intervals in their voyage. Bren stood stock still, but gathered the presence to bow profoundly as the Ajuri swung a collectively outraged look in his direction. “He had better have it!” Cajeiri said. “Now!”
“Nandiin,” Bren said in a low voice, and with a deep bow.
“Is this Damiri’s son?” the old man snapped. “Is this rude young person my great-grandson?”
“I am my father’s son, and the aiji-dowager’s great-grandson,”
Cajeiri said, head high, eye to eye with his uncle and great-grandfather, whom he omitted from the genealogy. “And my mother is inside, and my father, and my great-uncle, and my great-grandmother the aiji-dowager. All of them esteem the paidhi very highly.”
“Well, we see all around us the result of that policy,” the old lord said, and shoved past, brushing past the boy and his guard, this time with no excuse of ignorance.
“Jegari!” Cajeiri snapped, and, Oh, my God, Bren thought, and moved to prevent a weapon being drawn, but not faster than Banichi and Jago, not faster than the Ajuri bodyguard— while young Jegari, do him credit, had only put his body between Cajeiri and the indignity of being shoved aside by his own great-grandfather.
Atageini Guildsmen, cooler heads and uninvolved, had by that time frozen, standing stock still in confrontation, blocking their doorway to access as the Ajuri lords reached the upper landing. The intrusion ran right into the roadblock.
“You will not lay hands on my lord, sir,” Jegari pursued the Ajuri from behind, in a voice very quiet, and full of dignity, despite the fact it was a young, high voice, and he was not Guild, nor remotely a match for those tall, black-clad individuals in the old man’s company who were.