The scowl persisted through patient, but at cleverly and slowly gave way to a deep frown, a thinking kind of frown, then a dark glance aside at adult company and back again. “Are these people your enemies, nand’ Bren?”
“Some of them certainly believe the paidhi has not served their interests. They have lost property and suffered greatly from the upheaval. One is certain, young sir, that the dowager can much better explain—”
“She calls them fools. She calls them very short-sighted. She says they have no good grasp of the numbers.” This last in a whisper not quite adequate, but at least the boy tried to keep his voice down.
Bren looked for escape, managed only: “It is a very delicate situation, young sir. One begs you watch and listen—and by no means use any word of Mosphei’ in these people’s hearing.”
“Not even ‘damn fools’?”
Wicked boy. It was not the best acquisition he had ever made, and not the paidhi’s best moment that had let him pick that up, in the depths of space.
“Especially not that,” Bren said fervently, and the young rascal swaggered off, smug and victorious, to talk to his great-grandmother, who was engaged with the volatile lord of the Ajuri.
Bren kept quiet and drew over to the side, pretended to sip the offered wine, wanting to keep all his wits about him and earnestly hoping the youngster was not going to follow days of extraordinarily good behavior with a catastrophic letdown.
The Astronomer had arrived with Tabini, and while he had been talking to Cajeiri, the court mathematician had shown up, the two old gentlemen now involved in an ongoing debate and very little noticed the summons to table. They were still in the anteroom, passionately flinging numbers about, when the rest went in to dinner.
“Well, well,” Ilisidi said, immediately seated—the privilege of age and rank—in her position at the head of the immensely expanded table. Tabini and Damiri occupied the places beside her, with Cajeiri—not to mention Tatiseigi and the Ajuri at either hand of that family group. Bren wanted a seat much removed from the high table, but servants directed him to a seat uncomfortably high and on Tatiseigi’s left hand, in fact, but there was no objecting. One sat where one’s host’s staff indicated and made the best of it. The Astronomer was seated just next, and that chair was vacant, the old man still engaged outside the hall.
“Here we are,” Ilisidi said as the buzz of movement diminished, “family and guests. One is ever so gratified. Do sit.”
One sat, even the aiji and his family.
Appropriate expressions of appreciation followed, a general murmur, and then the host’s recommendation of the first course, in all of which there was, thank God, a moratorium on politics. The Astronomer and the mathematician strayed in and found their places, fortunately not near one another, and the Astronomer began asking Bren questions which, again fortunately, pertained to the abstract character of space and travel through it, not the details of their trip itself, and distracted him from any conversation with Tatiseigi, who, having Damiri next to him, was interested in talk up the table, not down.
It was an extravagant and otherwise very kabiu dinner, security standing formally behind each participant, everything in season, wonderfully prepared—with due indication from the dowager’s attentive staff and a graceful and quick substitution for every dish that might have proved inconvenient for a human guest. Bren sampled the dinner ever so slightly, finding his stomach, having had chancy fare for days, was not amenable to a surfeit of rich food.
There were seven courses to get through, again, fortunate seven, forecast by the number of the varieties of drink offered at the outset, and the portions were atevi-scale.
A massive effort. There were seasonal flowers on the tables all about. A whole beast appeared, offered as the main course— it was the season for game, and there it sat in the middle of the table, horns, hooves and all, done up in glaze that, fortunately, in Bren’s opinion, contained a fair amount of alkaloid. The paidhi took fish as an always correct alternative, quite happily so, while the beast was diminished to bone—the cook must have started that dish the moment Ilisidi arrived at the apartment, or optimistically before that.
There were fruits of the season, there were grain cakes, which were, if not the ones with black seeds, perfectly safe, and very good with spiced oil; there were eggs with sauce, one of Ilisidi’s favorites.
There was a secondary offering of fish, and shellfish, with black bread—never eat that one, Bren knew. And last of all came a sweet course, a dessert, a huge confection, more architecture than food, the presentation of which drew great appreciation—Bren nibbled at a very small slice of cake with sweet sauce, sure it at least was safe, but it was absolutely beyond his power to swallow more than two bites. Endless rounds of tea, and the absolutely mandatory compliments to the chief cook and his staffc Then Ilisidi, host and mistress of the table, invited her grandson the aiji to speak. A silence ensued, a deepening silence, as Tabini stared fixedly at his wine glass, and turned it a full revolution on the table.
“Nandiin,” Tabini said then, in that deep voice, and Bren expected a lengthy speech, full of plans. “Nandiin, there was bloodshed in the Kadagidi house, when the traitor’s plane announced its intention to land. One believes that preceded his decision to turn south. There, he was allowed to land.”
Chilling, both in implications of an in-family bloodletting, a purge within the house—and in implications the southerners had been very unwise to allow that plane to land. One remembered that Tabini had twice offered amnesty to that clan. One suspected it would not happen the third time. An infelicity of two leaped into Bren’s mind, in Banichi’s voice.
Another silence. Another revolution of the wine glass.
“We are informed the tashrid will have a quorum by dawn, the hasdrawad by midafternoon,” Tabini said further, while the wine glass turned in his fingers.
Then those unsettlingly pale eyes flashed up, squarely at Bren.
“The paidhi will deliver a report to the joint body before sunset.”
Bren’s heart sped. Thank God he had put in the time to have it ready, edited down from two years of notes to Tabini. Thank God, thank God. A final polish. That was what it needed.
“Aiji-ma,” he said with a little nod of his head.
“We have received reports,” Tabini said, still in that deathly, biding silence, “from the coast, from the north, from the east—”
With a nod toward his grandmother. “We have asked that the people keep shops and shutters closed until the legislature has ruled. This is for public safety, and for public attention to the radio, so that they will know what is done. This is our decision. Those of the two houses who have come foremost, those on their way at our first summons, their names we know.”
Another revolution, in silence.
“We have been immoderately generous throughout our administration,” Tabini said, “in our treatment of those who have offended us. Those who have offended twice, and those who have offended the people, however, will find no such generosity. We do not admit that Murini has ever been aiji. None of his decrees has legal force. Such administrative matters as he signed must be presented again, or allowed to fall, from the greatest to the smallest act. We look for a list of these matters to appear on my desk, sorted into public and private categories, within two days. Any matter, however small, which does not appear on that list will not be considered for confirmation. Any omitted matter must be submitted as a new action.”
It could be done. Clerks would have the lights on all night, but surely it could be done, given the court penchant for record-keeping and lists. It would be every grant of title, every court judgment, even divorce decrees which had found their way through the lower court system to the aiji’s audience hall, every Filing of Deed or Intent, every adjudication, every assassination or fine: In short, every act public and private that Murini might have signed during his tenure. Most, purely administrative, would get a glance and a stamp; some would receive much more attention. It was, in effect, an audit of legal grants and confiscations, of awards and contracts, of alliances between houses, everything that might affect man’chi or empower one clan over another.