Pretender

He took three strides to the door, found one of the dowager’s staff out in the hall, her arms full of printed, bound books, doubtless his.

“Forgive me, nadi,” he said in a low, urgent tone. “Set those aside and take me to Banichi or Jago or Cenedi. Immediately.”

“Nandi,” she said, bowing, and searching desperately in the baroque hallway for somewhere safe to set her burden. “Please follow.” Her conclusion was simply to clutch the heavy stack to her bosom and go, and he followed after her, back the way she had come, back to a door only staff would use, and a corridor as plain and severe as the ordinary corridors were ornate. Thick carpet-deadened steps here, minimal lighting cast the place in shadow as well as silence, and she led him quickly along one corridor and another until they reached a small, close room, a place of thickly-baffled walls and a little brighter lighting.

Banichi was there, with Cenedi, with Jago as well, and Tano. All eyes looked in his direction, fixed in absolute startlement.

“Nandi.” From Banichi, quietly and respectfully.

And he suddenly felt the fool. Felt like bowing, being out of his proper territory and with no good reason behind his flight from his own premises.

“Moni and Taigi just came in, nadiin-ji. One could not entirely account for their provenance. They claimed relation to the estate. I set them to query the major domo, regarding the printing.” He found himself a little out of breath, and Jago had already moved, past him, back down the corridor, on an investigative track. He added, inanely attempting to keep the conversational tone: “I came here.”

“Curious,” Banichi said. “They would know better. And staff let them in.”

“We were watching,” his young guide said.

“Unacceptable,” Cenedi said, and left on Jago’s track, with his own man on his heels and the young woman with the bound texts hard pressed to keep up.

“One hardly knew,” Bren began awkwardly, left alone with Banichi. “I held them in good regard.”

“Their reputation and their clearance was once impeccable for their assignment,” Banichi said. “Their current behavior is not.

They have used accesses they no longer own to get in here. Bren-ji, go down that corridor to your right and exit the door.”

He didn’t question, except to say: “I left my computer on my desk.”

“Yes,” Banichi said, and Bren delayed no second longer, only went quickly where Banichi told him to go, to an unfamiliar plain door at the end of a service corridor.

That door opened into an ornate room behind a partial curtain—and led to the dowager herself, who, seated by a high window, looked up as he walked out from behind that curtain and into her presence.

“Aiji-ma,” he said with a deep bow.

“There is an alert,” Ilisidi said straight off, her mouth set in a hard network of disapproving lines.

“These were staffers of the lower court residency, aiji-ma,” Bren said, “and once part of the staff on my estate on the coast, but retired from service. Now they claim to represent the estate staff.

Many people have fled to safe venues. It is possible they are telling the truth, aiji-ma, and protective of me.”

“My doorkeeper is grievously at fault,” Ilisidi said, “for attempting to finesse this situation uninstructed, if nothing more.”

Attempting to observe and protect, without interfering between him and former servants. The young woman with the printing had been right by the door, give the staff that. There might have been others hovering near and ready.

But if the two had been Guild, they very likely would have been too late.

“They may indeed be i

“As certainly should have been!” Ilisidi said, and the cane hit the floor.“My major domo is himself questionable, at this point. These two persons should never have been allowed inside the residency, and the paidhi’s life is not a disposable resource!”

“Cenedi is investigating, aiji-ma. One has every confidence—”

“One has no idea how this staff of ours has ever survived our absence,” Ilisidi snapped, the head of the cane tucked against her chest. “Damned fools! Two years of managing for themselves and they develop their own cha

Delusions. Delusions of competency. This will not be acceptable.”

“One has no wish to blame—”

“The person at the door was overawed by credentials,” Ilisidi said grimly. “By paper, and seals, not by weapons. A junior staffer was set at the door. Here was the error, and my staff will answer for it.

An investigation will be undertaken, now.”

They had overtaxed the meager staff since their arrival. Most of Ilisidi’s staff had gone east to Malguri, at the other end of the continent, during their absence. The remaining few had stayed up all night trying to cope with the speed of events, and knowledgeable people had to sleep sometime.

But some head would roll, figuratively at least; and Banichi was right. Moni and Taigi, old employees of the Bu-javid, should damned sure know the hazard of subterfuge with any high lord’s staffc let alone the aiji-dowager’s. Whatever became of them, they surely, surely knew the dowager’s staff was not to trifle with.

“One ca

“Ha!” Ilisidi snorted. “Sit down, paidhi-aiji, and let staff mend these bad habits.”

“One has no plausible excuse for these persons,” he said despairingly, and subsided into a gilt chair, by a window that looked past a balcony rail onto the crazy-quilt tiled rooftops of the city under a blue, crisp sky.

“Appalling,” Ilisidi said sharply. “Are we prepared for this address?”

“As prepared as one may be, aiji-ma,” he said, trying to recapture the loose ends of his reasoning, the pieces of attempted logic that rocketed through his mind. A loud thump resounded through the walls, another distraction shocking his nerves. He tried to ignore the situation.

“We shall be at hand to corroborate the paidhi’s account,” the dowager said without missing a beat. “But we look to the paidhi to exhibit his ordinary eloquence.”

“One only hopes to oblige, aiji-ma,” he said, and at that moment Nawari, who had his arm in a sling this morning, quietly opened the door and said, “The intruders are both contained, nandi.”

“Well,” Ilisidi said, as if this disposed merely of the lunch menu, not his former staff, for whom he had a deep and wounded sympathy. “We are ready. We are quite ready, nand’ paidhi.”

“Whenever the aiji-dowager chooses,” he murmured, hoping that thump had not involved his computer.

But Ilisidi tapped her cane, told Nawari, “We shall go downstairs,” gathered herself to her feet, and that was that.

Scarcely seated, he got up, straightened his coat, earnestly hoping for his own staff to turn up.

Jago did, with the computer slung over her shoulder. She entered by the same door, gave a little bow, stood waiting.

There was no way to ask, with the dowager in charge, exactly what had happened. He was no longer master of the situation, not while the dowager directed her staff, not while Cenedi had taken charge, and had links, surely, to Tabini-aiji’s staff—whom they failed to trust, quite. It was all disquieting. But whatever the state of confidence in the other staff, one had a notion that persons were moving throughout the lower floors of the building, that the legislature, both houses of it, were moving into session.

Where is Banichi? he wanted to ask Jago. What happened? What about Tano and Algini? Are we taking our direction from the aiji’s staff? But the only source of information was Jago’s strictly formal deportment, her quiet competency. Everything was as right as it could be: His staff was doing all that could be done, and his questions were no help at all. He was going downstairs in close company with the aiji-dowager, in more security than Tabini himself could muster, and that was that.