Текст книги "Pretender"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

What would a human do? Tabini had asked him in the old days, before the voyage. What things would you warn against, if it were your own people, paidhi-ji?

It always gave the paidhi-aiji a queasy feeling, answering that question honestly, worrying that he might be giving Tabini ideas—the same way he’d worried when he counseled Tabini to mercy and moderation in the face of treason. Maybe he’d generated ideas he never should have let loose among atevi. Or maybe too much mercy was the key damage he’d done, urging Tabini not to slaughter his defeated enemies. They were sitting here under assault, because certain people had remained alive. They’ll concentrate your opposition, he’d argued; you can keep an eye on them. Leave them alive.

So here he sat under siege by those same enemies, wishing Tabini would ask him for advice one more time, and fearing he would give the wrong advice one more time if Tabini did that.

And meanwhile, roiling about in the basement of his mind, was that other application of kabiu, that word which ordinarily applied to the room arrangement and those flowers in a green vase over on the table: Kabiu, that meant fit or decorous or appropriate, if one was setting a table. Kabiu could also apply to battlefields.

To honor. To proper behavior.

Kabiu, on this occasion, he divined as the reason otherwise sensible people, even the Ajuri, had to set themselves in a target zone, making their statement for this aiji over the other, declaring for civilized behavior, and most of all—maintaining the degree of civilization that underlay atevi culture even in conflict. Man’chi was driving it, an instinct as fatal and as basic an attraction as gravity.

And if, in a great ebbing tide, man’chi left a leader like Murini of the Kadagidi, he was done. He would have no prospect for long life, considering his numerous enemies, and he would find himself instead of well-received under many roofs, suddenly with nowhere in the world to go.

And what answer would Murini the man deliver to this passive attack on his rule? Fatalistic acceptance? Tame surrender?

One didn’t think so. No. He had been a man of subterfuge and connivance, but that didn’t mean he’d go out quietly, nor would those more violent sorts who had supported his claims.

Would the Kadagidi clan, seeing the tide starting to turn against Murini, itself make some redemptive gesture, and fall away from their own lord, who was absent in Shejidan, to keep armed struggle away from their territory?

Murini, as aiji of the whole country, had to leave his own clan and go to Shejidan to rule, expecting the Kadagidi, ironically left leaderless, to stay steadfast in man’chi while the man who should be attending their interests was off claiming the whole continent—was that not the way Tabini-aiji and his predecessors had dealt with Taiben, leaving the clan loyalty behind and hoping for man’chi to survive?

The whole arrangement among the Kadagidi was still new enough that Murini had likely retained control of the Kadagidi in his own hands and not fully allotted clan authority to a strong subordinate. Such adjustments, such as Tabini had with Keimi of the Taibeni, took time, and one could imagine such relationships were sometimes troublesome, and fraught with second thoughts. It took time for reward to repay sacrifice of a clan’s own interests. But it all seemed queasy logic for him to follow, answers wired to buttons that didn’t truly exist in the paidhi’s instincts. He constantly made appeal to analogs and like-this and like-that-but-not, and, in the outcome, found himself utterly at sea, still trying to find the reason all these people were all sitting here waiting for dark and likely attack.

All right. All right. For a moment accept that all these well-dressed people weren’t crazy, accept that the Kadagidi wouldn’t bomb the grounds or attack a dozen clans at once for very practical reasons, like public opinion, or for moral reasons like kabiu, a virtue Bren didn’t for a moment believe Murini possessedc he’d shown damned little sense of it before now.

For a moment assume that the Kadagidi would be sane, middle-tier atevi and that they would make a rational atevi response. What would be a sane and kabiu response from their side of this contest?

Scaled response. Targeted and scaled response rather than a general assault with massive loss of life and subsequent blood-feuds. That was how the Assassins’ Guild was supposed to function, and that was what was anomalous in this whole upheaval.

The silence, the non-involvement of the Assassins’ Guild, the leadership of which was presently sitting in Shejidan deadlocked and refusing to take either aiji’s side, when it should have stepped in immediately to protect Tabini’s household and to prevent the coup in the first place. Now it categorically refused to budge. It had lawyerlike procedures, like a court. It had to hear evidence, receive petitions. An assassination to be obtained involved a Filing of Intent and might see counterfilings on the other side: There were Guild members just like Cenedi, or Banichi and Jago, or a hundred others under this roof and out on the drive—members whose man’chi was to a particular lord, a particular house, above all else. So Guild members would be on both sides of a Filing—but likewise they took a dim view of wildcat operations, movements without Filing and particularly movements that destabilized, rather than stabilized, the government of a region.

Could the Kadagidi, without Filing, move an Assassin into a neutral clan’s territory, and take Tabini out personally? Wipe out the ruling family, down to the youngest? They had tried– at Taiben, when they had hit the lodge and attacked the residency in Shejidan—and the Guild had taken no official action. It had been proven that Tabini had survived the move, and had gathered force, when he had gone out toward the coast, toward Yolanda Mercheson—and the Guild had done nothing to support him.

That had to be troubling Banichi and every other Guild member on the continent. What in hell was going on at Guild Headquarters?

Ordinarily, lords didn’t undertake wildcat operations against one another, precisely because the Guild and the aiji in Shejidan would alike take a dim, lethal view of that behavior. But had it become clear to the Kadagidi that the Guild was not going to act, that there was no argument or Filing that was going to protect Tabini at all?

That would encourage actions far more profitable to the Kadagidi than a frontal assault on a neighbor’s land.

That indicated one action that began to make sense in this situation, one delicate, surgical action that would fragment this gathering and bring down the hopes of restoring the Ragi clan to power. And all the fire and fury might be intended only to mask the process of getting an Assassin into position.

And these various people who had assembled to protect Tabini by their presence and position had incidentally brought an impressive attendance of Guild Assassins as their own bodyguards. The Guild might be neutral, deadlocked, and stuck in Shejidan, but local man’chi was healthy and thriving, and, at the moment, armed to the teeth and sitting on Tatiseigi’s lawn, and probably on the Kadagidi’s front porch, at the same time, if they could get a view of what was happening beyond the hills. Both sides were furnished with Guild enough to spend some time infiltrating and manuevering at this stage– but in the nature of things, Tabini, for his part, had, at every reception, to bet his life that none of these arrivals of other villages, towns, clans, masked some Assassin whose man’chi was secretly to the Kadagidi.

That was surely what the conference outside the door was dealing with, among other things Bren wished he had a clear picture of. They were screening every Guild member who came through the door, and seeking information on every Guild member who might be on the grounds: “Do you know that man, nadi? Did he come with the lord’s wife’s clan?”

He had been in space too long, Bren said to himself. As long as he’d been in atevi society, he had encountered such blind spots in his vision, dark spots, situations where he just didn’t automatically draw the obvious conclusion without asking Banichi or Jago—and even then their plain answer didn’t always evoke all it should. But he had known that very certainly staff was vetting everyone who got past that door: they always did. The Guild in some respects was a sort of exclusive lodge, and the senior members, the really dangerous ones, knew each other by sight, in and out of uniform.

That was why Tabini’s loss of the staff who had protected him so long was such a heavy blow—not alone the emotional loss at their murder, but the practical consequences of new staff not knowing things that had gone to the grave with the previous holders of their offices. The well-oiled machine that had operated so smoothly to protect and inform Tabini was suddenly gone—replaced by new people who had attached themselves to him during his exile, and one only hoped the current chief of Tabini’s personal bodyguard, Ismini, knew his men as well, and that information flowed through that staff with something like the old efficiency. Banichi and Jago had had ties in the aiji’s old household, but they were at least two years out of the loop, and perhaps underinformed and unconnected for much longer than that: they couldn’t reconstitute it.

Ismini—Bren had no idea where he had come from, or who these men were who surrounded Tabini these days.

The whole situation conjured all the machimi he had ever seen, disasters which involved breakdowns of Guild actions, the sort of thing that laid bodies in heaps on the stage, when what should have been a neat, kabiu action, or a sure deflection of an attempted assassination—turned out a real damn mess thanks to new men filling positions they ill understood or outright pursuing divided loyalties, their ties to other agencies imperfectly severed.

The whole train of thought upset his stomach, as if the encounter on the steps wasn’t enough. But the dust around the Ajuri arrival settled in a round of courtesies and sips of tea, never mind the rural Ajuri were themselves a wild card—bringing in a collection of somewhat lower-level Guild that weren’t necessarily as well known to the aiji’s men, or to other staffs. They got in. It would have been a major incident, if Ismini and his men had not let Ajuri in to protect their lord—but bet that they were asking questions out there, and sending runners out to ask among those who might have connections to the Ajuri.

Meanwhile, in the general easing of courtly tensions, at least, Tatiseigi began, inanely enough, to propose a formal supper– trying to put a patch on the fact that, no, the house didn’t have any suitable room for the Ajuri, who were going to have to lodge downstairs in what Tatiseigi extravagantly called the Pearl Room, which one understood would be cleared of records and desks and provided with beds. The Ajuri were not happy. And Tabini meanwhile took the chance to request a special buffet for the staffs, allowing the individual bodyguards the chance to eat on duty and discuss, discussion which would never do at table, oh, no, never, ever discuss business at a proper table, even when the lawn was full of impromptu militiac but most of all, find out what the Ajuri had brought in, and try to resurrect some of the knowledge which had died with Tabini’s original head of staff, investigating, too, the connections the Atageini might know about—since the marriage that had produced Lady Damiri herself, under this roof.

Meanwhile Tatiseigi rattled on, went on to propose the menu, God help them, in meticulous detail, and to recommend a special game delicacy of the region, with a glowing description of the pepper sauce.

Bren laced his hands together across his middle and tried to look appreciative and relaxed instead of grim, desperate, and increasingly anxious about the proceedings—an attack of human nerves, he said to himself, and meanwhile he knew Tatiseigi himself was no doddering fool, and that this performance was purposeful. The dinner in question was going to be one of those formal affairs where meaning ran under every syllable, and where, granted no one was poisoned at the table, atevi felt one another’s intentions out. But he himself wasn’t up to it. He didn’t want to attend a formal supper with the Ajuri. He didn’t want to sit there eating custard and sauce and wondering what was going on in the woodwork, while staffs were just as energetically trying to parse loyalties and connections running back decades if not centuries.

Most of all he wanted, dammit, just five short minutes, in all this expenditure of valuable time, one short chance to talk to Tabini privately for a single interview outside this carefully monitored gathering. He wanted to turn in the report he had risked his life developing, and he thought he deserved that chancec never mind Ilisidi’s staff had doubtless done their briefing, not an unfavorable one, he was sure, and never mind his own report, coming from a human mind when all was said and done, had probably become superfluous in the press of time and threat, at least in Tabini’s estimation. Tabini probably thought it a headache he didn’t need at this point, raising questions he wasn’t ready to deal with—but it wasn’t, dammit, superfluous. He wasn’t sure by any means that Ilisidi would have covered all the essentials the way he would have wanted: He wanted the’t‘s crossed and the i’s dotted with Tabini, he had spent two years picking his words carefully, choosing very precise ways he wanted to set out certain facts of the outside universe to Tabini, and dammit, he was going to have that report riding his mind and weighing down his conscience until he could offload it and say he had done his best.

No matter what then blew up and no matter what blame public opinion laid on his shouldersc which was the other looming threat, that when the dust did settle, he might not be able to get to Tabini at all. He’d had a taste of unbuffered atevi opinion on the steps. He began to ask himself if Tabini’s distance from him didn’t already have something to do with Tabini’s desire to separate himself from human influence, or Tabini’s outright dissatisfaction with him, turning away from the advice he had once relied on. In that estimation, he was lost. He didn’t know what his status was with Tabini, and he couldn’t gain a clear signal one way or the other.

A servant loomed, with a tray. He waved off another offering of cakes, allowing his tea to cool, and wondered meanwhile if anyone had yet taken potshots at Rejiri’s plane or ambushed a trainload of inbound west coast supporters. He tried once, furtively, to catch Ilisidi’s eye: no good. She was not open to inquiry.

And after that he tried to think of an excuse, any excuse, to take his superfluous presence outside, where he might be able to get information.

The dowager was, at the moment, arguing her grandson’s determination not to change his dress for the occasion.

The door opened. Three more individuals arrived, two young ladies and an elderly woman, all of whom suddenly nudged hard at memory: Damiri’s sister Meisi, Bren realized in a little flood of embarrassment. Damiri’s aunt, whose name momentarily defied memory, and a young cousin, now teenaged, nicknamed Deiaja—all Ajuri clan, the female contingent only now arriving from the buses, one supposed, to take their places in the general madness. They seemed quite surprised to see him in the gathering; and the dowager; and next descended on Cajeiri, who scowled at them and refused to be fussed over. Deiaja had outright shot up a foot since he had last seen the child: Small wonder he hadn’t known her when she appeared. And there she was, all cordial bows, with her hair in braids and Ajuri clan ribbon—preparing to be a target right along with all the other fools who had come here. He was completely appalled. Ajuri clan was here, with its younger generation as well as its lord exposed to risk, right along with the Ragi.

Was it a statement, a commitment to a stand, equal risk with the Ragi, the Atageini, and the Taibeni?

But this particular young cousin, this pretty teenager Deiaja, he recalled, was half Kadagidi herself, was that not so?

Ajuri clan had linked to both eastern clans of the Padi Valley, the Atageini and the Kadagidi; and the long-nosed aunt– Geidaro was her name; it came to him in a flash—the aunt was the link in that situation. She had been married to a Kadagidi, a cousin of Murini’s, for at least a decade of her life, the contract now allowed to lapse, since, oh, about the time Cajeiri was bornc And were those events connected—an Ajuri-connected heir born to the Ragi aiji, and Geidaro severs ties with her Kadagidi husband, retaining the daughter in Ajuri possession, however, not to give up the Kadagidi tie, not quite?

Meanwhile Cajeiri rose and bowed to the girl, who had at least six years on him, but not a smidge of height. The courtesy won a pretty smile from Deiaja, even a little simper. Bren rose, guided by habit, despite the urge to flinch from all Ajuri at the moment, and bowed in his turn, quite gravely.

“Nand’ paidhi.” A pretty bow from the Ajuri girl.

“One is honored.” She was a tiny miss, for an atevi, and had Damiri’s willowy look in minature. She smiled as blithely as if they had met at a summer fair, went her way to bow to her aunt’s Atageini great-uncle, and Bren took his seat again, wishing he were not professionally suspicious and asking himself whether this obliging child had had a vote in coming here, or where, precisely, this child’s Kadagidi father was at this exact moment.

Over the eastern border, over in Kadagidi territory? Absolutely.

And did that father know he had a daughter newly arrived over here, in the target zone?

Less likely, unless the Ajuri had simply phoned the Kadagidi and said, “Oh, by the way, we shall visit Tatiseigi this week. We shall greatly appreciate quiet while we do so.”

It did limit Kadagidi options in dealing with this uprisingc as uprising it was, even while it got a number of people past the doors.

And on that thought, darker human worries leaped up, despite all thoughts of kabiu, thoughts that kept him mute and obscure in the general exchange of greetings and courtesies. Dammit, the outright artillery or bomb attack on this peaceful gathering that kabiu called unthinkable was in fact perfectly conceivable to atevi, or what in all sanity was the point of them all coming here and laying their bodies on the line to prevent it?

And was there anything the Ajuri could possibly gain in the scheme of things, except by coming in to take Tabini’s side, when Tabini’s heir was half Ajuri? Did they fear that young Cajeiri would be killed, and that the clan would be sucked into a bloody feud willy-nilly on Tabini’s side of the balance?

They were clearly moving closer to power. The old lord, frail as he was, was no candidate—but Damiri’s uncle, Kadiyi, had a strong presence, and if anything happened to Cajeiri’s other guardians, he certainly could assert himself as a relative.

Bren remained worried and silent, listening to the polite social chatter as the aunt settled down next to Ilisidi and chattered on, and (a flurry of servants with chairs and teapots) as Meisi settled in beside Damiri and Deiaja plumped down beside her. “Did you have a safe trip?” Oh, yes, no difficulties, but going by road was such an uncomfortable way to travelc discussion of absent relatives, another cousin in childbed and oh, so much regretting not being here– For God’s sake, Bren thought, as if the whole undertaking were a family picnic.

Then, then his ears pricked up at a few chattered bits from the half-Kadagidi girl: Uncle Murini was still in the capital. Indeed, said Ilisidi, brows lifting. And oh, yes, in the last few hours, the aunt said, he had called the tashrid to assemble and come into session.

The tashrid, the aristocratic half of the legislature, the half that approved successions and heard challenges and Filings.

It was the body that initiated a declaration of war or called for a Guild action.

“Has he the numbers?” Tabini asked, meaning, knowledgeable ears understood, the quorum and the favorable numbers of date and attendance to conduct any legitimate legislative action.

“Indeed, no, aiji-ma. The lords, being no fools,” Damiri’s uncle said, “are many of them finding travel difficult, mysterious breakdowns, disruptions in the rails between their homes and Shejidan.”

“Not to mention,” Aunt Geidaro said with a wicked smile, “an outbreak of sore throat circulating in the capital itself, a remarkably contagious affliction. It travels by telephone.”

Tabini looked amused. Others laughed. Bren, seeing that look of Geidaro’s, felt a band loose from about his heart at this strangely conspiratorial tone from a woman who had personal ties to the Kadagidi.

God, were they winning? Were there disaffections? Was resistence against Murini rising up in the capital itself, among the lawmakers?

And in this thawing of manner did he detect a certain glee in the Ajuri attitude toward the situation, and possibly—possibly, to judge by the aunt, even a little rift within the Kadagidi themselves, a resentment rising toward their power-grabbing lord? Was that what the Ajuri were here in such numbers to signal—full participation, and maybe some special connections for this little clan to contribute or to claim, by being here in such numbers?

At least the legislature itself seemed to be having second thoughts, taking a cautious, though stingingly public step away from Murini, a small step starting with, doubtless, a brave few. It was a step which—if their unity held, if their numbers were sufficient, if fear that Tabini might come home and demand an accounting had begun to trouble their thoughts—might infect still others with this sore throat.

But such a movement in the capital might throw fear into Murini and start other forces maneuvering, might it not—perhaps recklessly and desperately so in the rebel south coast and the loyal west coast, where armed force might come into play?

And just when had this disaffection begun to whisper through quiet meetings, with nudges and glances and backroom whispers?

Perhaps it had come the moment it became clear the dowager and the heir were back on the mainland and were receiving support from two and three clans.

Perhaps it had begun when it became clear a growing number of dissidents from Murini’s rule were all gathering here, defying calamity, daring Murini to do anything and suggesting by their growing presence that he couldn’t. Maybe the Ajuri represented a power struggle within the Kadagidi clan themselves, increasingly alienated from Murini, the more he tried to be a national leader and compromise their particular interests– that had happened in the past. What was the proverb? Kaid’ airuni manomini ad’ heiji. It is hard to see the provinces from the capital.

“If one might suggest,” Bren said, ever so cautiously, “if there is any phone link possible to the Guild, nandiin, perhaps the aiji might at this moment seize the initiative to inform them—”

“The aiji needs no lesson!” the lord of the Ajuri snapped, cutting him off.

“Grandfather,” Damiri said, a gentle intervention for which Bren was personally grateful, and in the same breath the ferule of Ilisidi’s formidable cane came down hard on the tiles.

“My grandson is no fool, to ignore advice,” Ilisidi said.

Then Tabini, in that distinctive voice that could knife through a parliamentary brawl, said, “The paidhi-aiji has a sensible point.

Hear him.”

A hint? A momentary caution, when favor and disfavor were on a knife’s edge?

The aiji needed desperately to keep the peace and not create difficulty with these clans.

“With most profound regard for the lord’s wise caution,” Bren said, trying not to hyperventilate, “and the aiji being most sensible of the true situation—the paidhi-aiji should go to Shejidan, to present the facts he has brought back from the heavens, namely that, without the mission the aiji ordered, the business with the human settlement would have brought foreign enemies to the world—a threat which—”

Tabini himself lifted a hand, stopping him right there. Bren braked, brimming over with facts and figures Tabini apparently had no interest in hearing or allowing to be heard, not here, not now, or not in front of these witnesses.

“Aiji-ma,” he said, and subsided into silence.

“We understand your position, nandi,” Tabini said with finality.

“Go speak with the staff.”

And do what? Bren asked himself. He had wanted out of the gathering. But he was dismayed to be so unexpectedly dismissed.

And say what to the staff, and learn what? He murmured a courtesy, nonetheless, and rose and bowed to one and all, finding he was truly, absolutely exhausted, frustrated with a situation out of control, and personally out of resources, now that Tabini tossed him out of the gathering, and presumably out of the state dinner as well.

Was it now secrecy from the Ajuri the aiji wanted around that report of his? Why? Did Tabini suspect that Kadagidi connection?

He reached the door, heard a rapid footstep, and found the heir at his elbow, outward bound along with him.

“And where is our great-grandson going?” That from the Ajuri lord.

“He is leaving in good company,” Ilisidi said sharply, and with a blow of the cane’s ferule against the tiles. “We were all awake all night. Doubtless we shall get little rest tonight. We are weary, out of patience, and hungry. Sandwiches, Tati-ji. At least give us sandwiches, or hasten this dinner! No more sugar!”

“Indeed,” Tatiseigi said, ordered about in his own hall, and the dinner discussion proceeded as Bren quietly let himself and Cajeiri out of the room, in among the waiting bodyguards.

“My apologies, nand’ Bren,” Cajeiri said stiffly. “My mother does not agree.” And rapidly, in Mosphei’, a language an heir of the aishidi’tat probably shouldn’t have picked up quite so fluently, but had: “My father’s mad.”

That, Bren himself had picked up, quite clearly.

“I hope not at me,” he said in Mosphei’.

“At Ajuri clan,” Cajeiri said pertly, and, as they gathered up Banichi and Jago, along with young Jegari: “My mother is mad, too.

They’re pushing, is that the word, nandi?”

All these years, and an eight-year-old could read better what was going on in that room. He had suffered his moment of desolation, of being the outsider, at a time when he held some of the pieces that might make a difference—but he had lost all sense of the undercurrents in that room, and Tabini was right: He was being of no help and he had better get out of there.

“One is hardly surprised,” Banichi muttered in Ragi, at his elbow—Banichi and Jago alike understanding more Mosphei’ than they ever admitted. “But pushing whom, young sir?”

At that moment Cenedi caught up to them.

“More buses are coming,” Cenedi said in a low voice. “We have forerunners already at the eastern fence, nandi. We do not know the clan, but we suspect they are from the north.”

More buses. More lives at risk.

“We have had a report,” Banichi said, “that the Kadagidi themselves are bringing clans up from the south to join them at Parai.”

The Kadagidi stronghold. “Coming up by train?” Bren asked, envisioning rival clans having it out at the train station, if Dur came in at the same time.

“Sources say so,” Cenedi answered. Sources. Spies, that meant, perhaps observers inside the other household, or maybe spies at the train station—certainly observers at the estate fence. God knew how word of further movements was getting back and forth to Cenedi, but Tabini’s people had surely brought in far better equipment than Uncle Tatiseigi’s antique establishment owned, and reports were now moving in some security, not only on the estate and within the province, but very probably through channels involving Taiben in the west and north and maybe up into the eastern hills—so he surmised, at least, by the degree of information that Cenedi had gathered. Tabini had been here long enough to have spread out a network, given the usual efficiency that surrounded the aiji, and if that had started into operation, reports of hostile movements might become more specific.

“The aiji said in there that the hill clans are coming,” Bren said, information which did not seem to surprise anyone.

“Tirnamardi cannot hold any more guests,” Jago said. “Or feed them all.They have sent for more supplies from Marim, which also have to be safeguarded, and which cannot be quiet.”

Marim was an Atageini town some forty klicks east.

“Meanwhile,” Banichi said wryly, “there is a quarrel between Lord Tatiseigi’s domestic staff and certain of the aiji’s security as to whether there should be a formal dinner with others still arriving—the kitchen is in utter chaos, and many of the Atageini have come in without supplies, expecting to be fed.”

The kitchen was overwhelmed. So was he. Fatigue might play a part in it. The calculation that everything he could possibly learn now was secondhand and late had its part in it, definitely. He felt every one of his blisters and bruises, and wished he could do something, but clearly staff was well ahead of him and its emergencies were mostly of a practical nature. What would come next—whether the Kadagidi attacked again or waited—wasn’t even anyone’s immediate concern.

But one worry came crystal clear, and he had within reach three staffers he absolutely trusted. “Do we, nadiin-ji, rely completely on the aiji’s bodyguard? Do we know these new men, and does information flow?”

“Information does not flow to us so readily as before, nandi,”

Cenedi said. “We know them. They were lesser men in the aiji’s service before the calamity. But their man’chi is firm.”

“Capable men?”

He saw his staff’s faces, not quite impassive, admitting a slight worry on their part—a great deal of worry, one could suspect, if they were not in front of a not quite discreet eight-year-old who was waiting, all ears. The paidhi had expected a simple confirmation; if he were not so harried and dim-brained, he would not have solicited a detailed answer, and if staff were not so harried, maybe they would not have given it in front of the boy who been part of the furniture for two years.