Intruder

“A television?”

“No.”

“Honored Mother, it is educational!”

“When one has a good recommendation from your tutor, one may consider it. Not until then.”

He sighed. He was not in the least surprised. Even mani had not let him have a television.

“One day, son of mine. Not now. And because you are young, there must be a few other restrictions. You may pick antiquities, but they must be only of metal or wood, nothing breakable, nothing embroidered, and nothing with a delicate finish or patina.”

“One has never broken anything! Well, not often. Not in months.”

“One trusts you would not willingly be so unfortunate. But if your choice of furnishing is breakable, if it can be stained or easily damaged, it must notbe an antiquity or a public treasure. And do not overcrowd your rooms, mind. Listen to the supervisor’s advice. And note too that a respected master of kabiu will arrange what you choose in a harmony appropriate to the household, so do not give him too hard a task. You will make a list of the tag numbers of those things you wish moved to your suite and deliver that list back to the supervisor. Or you can take back any of your old furniture you would like.”

“One would ever so prefer to choose new things, honored Mother!”

“Then do.” She handed him the paper and the plan. “So go, go, be about it!”

“Yes, honored Mother!” He sketched a bow and headed for the door at too much speed. Great-grandmother would have checked him sharply for such a departure. He checked himself and turned and bowed properly, deliberately, lest he offend his mother and lose a privilege just granted. “One is very gratified by your permission,” he said properly. “Honored Mother.”

A very faint smile lay under her solemnity. It was his favorite of her expressions.

“Go,” she shaped with her lips, smiling, and gave a little waggle of her fingers.

He left quietly, shut the door, and let a grin break wide as he faced his aishid, fairly dancing in place.

“We get to go down to the storerooms and pick out furniture!” he said. It was the best, most exciting thing since he had gotten here. He held up the papers. “And you can pick, too!”

The papers with the Ragi seal on them meant they had permission to go to the lifts. By themselves. And Lucasi and Veijico, in uniform, had their sidearms with them, and Antaro and Jegari had the small badges which meant Guild-in-training. The guards at the lifts made no objections at all to such a proper entourage, with proper papers. And Lucasi had a lift key, which he used once they got in. “So nobody can stop the lift,” he said importantly, as the lift clanked into motion.

They went straight down for a good distance; the lift stopped and let them out in a very officelike corridor that showed other, dimly lit corridors. The place was significantly deserted. Spooky. Their steps echoed.

Lucasi had the paperwork, but did not so much as check it, not since his first look; he said something obscure to Veijico, she said, “Yes, one agrees,” and they kept walking down the hall, arriving at the supervisor’s office, having contacted the supervisor as they walked.

And the supervisor very politely rose as they entered, looked at the official paper, bowed, then took up a stack of white tags with strings and a little roll of tape, which he brought with him. Veijico gave him the permissible paper with the room sizes. And the supervisor personally led them out and down the hall to a long, long dimly lit side hall, past doors with just numbers on them. He opened the one marked 15 and turned on the lights inside.

It was a huge, dim, cold room full of furniture that made shadows, shadows upon shadows, more than the lights could deal with. The whole room smelled of something like incense, or vermin-poison. And it held the most wonderful jumble of beds and chairs, some items under brown canvas, some just stacked with pieces of cardboard or blankets between.

“One might show you first what is already tagged for you, young lord,” the supervisor said.

“One wishes to see it, nadi,” Cajeiri said, and followed the man to a set-aside area with a little bureau and a little bedstead and a rolled up carpet. The bureau and the bed had carved flowers. And he almost remembered that bureau with a little favor.

But it was undersized. Baby furniture. It was downright embarrassing to think he had ever used it.

And there were far more wonderful things all around them.

“We are permitted to choose different ones,” Cajeiri said.

“That you may, young lord. If one could ask your preferences, one might show you other choices.”

“Carving,” he said at once. He had seen better carving on a lot of furniture around them, some with gilt, some without. “A lot of carving. With animals, not flowers, and not gold. The most carving there is. You would not have any dinosauric”

The man looked puzzled. “No, nandi. One must confess ignorance of such.”

“Well, big animals, then. With trees. Except,” he added reluctantly, “we are not permitted to have antiquities.”

“I know several such sets,” the supervisor said, and led the way far down the aisle between towering stacks of old furniture.

The first set was all right, dusty, but the animals were all gracefully ru

The third, around the corner, had fierce wild animals snarling out of a headboard and a big one with tusks, staring face-on from a matching bureau with white and black stone eyes. “This one, nadi!” he said. “And this!”

So a tag went on that set. And he had most of the bedroom. It was a big bed. Bigger than the one he had in mani’s apartment.

“You will need chairs for a sitting room, young gentleman; we have a suggestion for seven chairs. And a table. A desk for an office. Carpet for three rooms. All these things.”

“And my aishid will have their beds and carpets,” he said. “And they can choose for themselves. Whatever they want. But we favor red for ourselves.”

“Red. One will strive to find the best,” the supervisor said.

There were five wonderful chairs. Mani would approve. They were heavy wood and tapestry had the most marvelous embroidery of mountains in medallions on the backs and seats, each one different. There was a side table of light and dark striped wood that was almost an antique. And for his office there was a desk that had a picture of a sailing ship, an old sailing ship, with sails. He liked that almost as much as the bedroom set. It reminded him of Najida.

There was a red figured carpet that was fifty years old and hedging on antiquity, too, but the supervisor said if it was in the bedroom, it would surely not be spilled on; and it was a wonderful carpet, with pictures woven in around the border of a forest and fortresses and animals, with a big tree for most of the pattern, but the bed would cover that.

Then his aishid picked out beds and side tables and chairs for their rooms: Lucasi and Veijico liked plain furniture with pale striped wood, and Antaro and Jegari liked a dark set that had trees and hunting scenes like Taiben forests, and they agreed to mix it up, because Veijico and Antaro had one room and Lucasi and Jegari had the other. But that was all right, too: Mother had said there would be a master of kabiu to sort all that out and put vases and hangings and such that would make it felicitous, however they scrambled the sets.

It was a lot of walking and pulling back canvas covers and looking at things. He thought they would all smell of vermin-poison by the time they got out of the warehouse.

But they were only half done. The supervisor showed them a side room and shelves and shelves of vases and bowls and little nested tables and statues and wall hangings. The supervisor pulled out several hangings he thought might suit, and Antaro wanted a hunting one that he rejected, himself. He took one that was mountains and lakes and a boat on the lake, and Veijico took another that was of mountains, while Lucasi and Jegari took hunting scenes and another mountain needlework.