Intruder

It was all just splendid. The huge brass vase, its surface cut with sparkling lines, was in the other corner.

And on the message table, the kabiu master had added a set of stones, three in number. Three was a felicitous number, and he was sure this particular type of stone, inky black, meant something special, and somebody would tell him that sooner or later.

He had no bath: he would share the household bath with his parents.

And there was no dining room, nor breakfast nook. But his own servants—that was excellent!

He thought now that he could be happy here. People had been killed in this apartment, in the coup, and died right in the front hallway. Murini the traitor had lived here after killing Father’s servants and guards. But all that unhappy history was washed away and repainted, and now there were growing plants. Living things. Space was wide and black and colder than anybody could imagine.

But plants made a room alive. And this one was.

If he could not live with Great-grandmother or have his own apartment all to himself, this was not too bad.

The baby, when he was born, would have windows.

Damn, he thought. He would have been perfectly, perfectlyhappy with what he had, until he knew the new baby had windows.

Had he? He tried to remember when he was a baby, and if that room was where he had used to live, but the first thing he could really remember in his whole life was the old sitting room, just in bits and pieces. And since the rebuilding, it was as if somebody had taken his memory and shaken it into pieces, where it regarded this place.

He could remember Great-uncle Tatiseigi’s place. And the porcelain lilies in the front hall, from long ago, before they been shot up and they had had to replace them.

He could remember a dark, deep place with a lot of real flowers. And spooky noise and echoes from far underground. He thought it was a funeral he remembered. But he could never remember where that was, except going down high, stone steps underground, and that he had been with his father, and ultimately closed in by the shadows over very many people.

But he never could remember where that place was.

Mostly, in his very earliest memories, more vivid than the lilies, he could remember Great-uncle’s place and being told to stay away from the mechieta pen.

Oh, they had been so tall and wonderful, the mecheiti.

He remembered being hauled off a mechieta, and it had been standing in bushes, which he now knew were Great-uncle’s driveway hedge, and the mechieta had gone right across the wet pavement and left tracks, so they had had to pull up all the concrete and start over. No one ever let him forget that one.

He was happy to remember the space station. And the starship, oh, he remembered that so clearly sometimes it hurt, and he waked up at night thinking he was there.

He remembered faces of his associates who lived there. Sounds. Voices. Those were fading. He had used to be able to remember them so clearly. Now they were hard to recall at all. And the thought struck him that the faces and the voices would be different now. They would be a little older. As he was.

He did not want to be mad at anyone or anything. Not today.

He had his cage.

And his plants.

And he had his aishid with him. He would always have them,so long as they all lived.

He had just taken a staff. He could manage who came and went with histhings.

And he had allies.Was that not what nand’ Bren and Great-grandmother and Lord Geigi had been doing out at Najida, after all? They had been collecting allies, and associatingthem into organizations that were going to be powerful.

And they had been very careful to include him in the meetings, as Father never did, because theypla

He had nand’ Bren, and Great-grandmother, and Lord Geigi, for a start. The new baby might try to get to Great-grandmother and become her favorite, but he was there first.

The new baby would have to try hard for nand’ Bren and Lord Geigi: they were solidly his.

He had Great-uncle Tatiseigi, and he knew more how to keep Uncle happy than any baby would arrive knowing, and that was not easy to figure out.

And not to forget Dur. The baby would never have met Dur or seen that yellow plane when it arrived out of the skies in the midst of a very bad situation.

And there was Taiben and the deep forest, who were his—not just because his father was so closely related and associated there, but because two of his aishid were Taibeni and had important parents, close to the lord of Taiben, almost cousins.

And the other two of his aishid were from the mountains, which he had yet to visit, but he would, someday; so there was that, too. Lucasi and Veijico had to have relatives who would be in favor of him.

His associations reached north and south and east and west, to the height and width of the aishidi’tat, and that was not so small a thing, was it?

He drew a deep, deep breath and went back to the map in his office. He pulled out all the pushpins that represented where he had already been.

Now he put them in for where he had allies.

He put a black pin in Dur, up in the northern Isles, and a second one for the Gan people who lived next to them—he had met the Grandmother of the Gan at Najida, when she had been visiting the Edi, and she had been very interested in him.

He put a black pin in the mountains where Lucasi and Veijico came from; another in Port Jackson, clear across the strait on Mospheira, for nand’ Toby and Barb-daja.

He put a black pin in Najida estate, which was Lord Bren and all his staff. He put one in Najida village, where he had met the Grandmother of the Edi and all her people, and was sure they favored him.

He put a pin at Kajiminda for Lord Geigi, who was especially nice to him, and another near Kajiminda, where the Edi were building a new estate, which had to be counted in the future.

And another black pin at Taiben, to the north of Shejidan, for Antaro and Jegari’s relatives and his father’s relatives, too. Taiben was as sure as it was possible to be.

Then there were his other relatives: a reluctant black pin in Ajuri territory, northwest of Taiben, where his mother’s father was lord. One very certain pin way across the continental divide, in Malguri, which was Great-grandmother, and one just next to it, that was Lady Drien, who was Great-grandmother’s cousin and a close ally through Great-grandmother. She was old, and old-fashioned, but she was influential.

One important one went just north of Shejidan, in Atageini clan territory, and next to Taiben: that was Tirnamardi, for Great-uncle Tatiseigi of the Atageini clan.

There was no way to get a pin that represented the space station, but he set one in the margin, for five associates up in orbit—and for Lord Geigi.

That was thirteen pins, a felicitous number, but he decided to be honest and not to stop counting. He stuck another, number fourteen, in the margin. That was for Jase-aiji, up on the station; Jase-aiji was one of the ship-captains, and Jase-aiji would stand by him.

Fourteen, however, was infelicitous and full of omens of division. Fifteen was not much better, and sixteen was infelicity stacked on infelicity. Seventeen was the most stable felicity until nineteen, and he did not know how to reach it unless he counted some pairs separately, and that had infelicities in itself.

Doggedly then, and with confidence in Lord Bren, he stuck a second pin right in the left coast of the Marid for Lord Machigi. He had never met Lord Machigi, but he would meet him, he was certain; when he did, he would get Lord Machigi on his side somehow.

Well, that bettered the count, but he desperately needed two more pins. Two more to felicity and stability, and he did not know where to get them.