Intruder

“Of all things,” his father said, then: “Take a bath. And one trusts no egg got on the carpet.”

“Honored Father.” He felt heat flowing to his face. “One regrets to report honestly there is egg on the carpet. One will have to call the servants to clean it—and they will. I have the promise of two excellent servants!”

“Have you?”

He had stepped into trouble. And trying to dodge around reasons with his father was just not a good idea.

“Someone had to carry out the sand and the eggshells, honored Father. But one has learned his bad tricks now, and it will not happen again.”

“One is certain something of the like can certainly happen again,” his father said, “and one doubts you have yet seen all his bad tricks.”

“Yes, honored Father.”

“So be smarter than he is. That seems a minimum requirement. Mind, he is here by my permission, which is hourly subject to change.”

“Honored Father.”

“One came here to tell you a bit of news.”

“Honored Father?”

“Your great-grandmother is back in the capital. Her plane just landed. She invites us all to di

“Yes,honored Father!” He bowed. He understood, he actually understood about the Marid. And he was gladto go to di

“You are to behave impeccably,” his father said sharply. “There will be politics at the table, even if no one mentions it, and lives rest on this agreement. Be wise. Be quiet. Be invisible.”

He bowed as his father left. And Boji squirmed, as he had been doing, trying to get free, or to bite him, or just because he was bored with being still.

“ Quiet,you!” He took a careful grip with his left hand on Boji’s harness and resisted the urge to be angry with Boji, who understood nothing about carpets or his father’s power or that he had nearly gotten banished back to the market to be sold again. He found a grip that quieted Boji, and carefully smoothed his fur.

Boji looked up at him with big golden eyes.

“You have to behave,” he found himself saying. Hewas saying such a thing to somebody else. The world was upside down.

And to be sure nothing else went wrong, he went to the cage and retrieved Boji’s lead, clipped it on and let him go.

Boji immediately tested the limit of it, bounding to the nearest chair, to the floor, all around him, winding the leash around his legs, and making him look ridiculous. He was passing the lead from one hand to the other to prevent being tripped, about the time his bodyguard showed up in the other doorway, all quiet and sober and wondering what had happened.

Boji chattered at them in reproach and climbed his leg and his coat, wanting to go all the way to his shoulder, as if he were a tree.

He stopped Boji at the crook of his arm, holding the lead very short, and Boji took a grip on his fist, peering over it, staring at his bodyguard and chattering defiantly at them.

“It seems to have found man’chi,” Antaro said.

If it was true, it was a very good thing. But he was standing there covered in egg-spatter, and having been laughed at by his fathercand warned to be invisible, and smarter than Boji.

But his father had, however, let him keep Boji. And tonight instead of being reprimanded, he had to go represent his father and mother at mani’s table.

He worked his hand in Boji’s fur, which Boji liked. And Boji chattered, but a very quiet chatter, sounding happier, at least.

“He is probably quite hungry,” he said. “He broke his egg. Find him another, nadiin-ji, and tell the servants we need the rug and the chair cleaned, and I shall have a bath. We have formal di

He did not recall really seeing his father laugh like that, except now and again with nand’ Bren, and nand’ Bren would laugh, too, about things he had never understood. So maybe it was not such a bad thing that his father laughed this time.

And if he looked in a mirror he might find he really deserved it.

There was a mirror in his bedroom. He went back and stood in front of it, and there he was, a little spattered, not too bad, and his coat not too bad. He had certainly looked a lot worse. It was by no means as bad as the concrete driveway. He had Boji in the crook of his arm, the leash in his hand, and Boji had curled up into a fairly compact ball, quite content for the while, and not looking too silly.

He really did not look the fool. Just a little messy. He decided his father had not been laughing at him. Rather, his father had been amused about the plot and maybe not even unhappy with him, since he had gotten along with the new tutor. His father was not always easy to figure out.

Boji untucked and ran out on his arm as if it were the limb of a tree, staring at the mirror, and bristling up and chattering at it in no welcoming way.

“Silly creature,” he said, and gathered Boji back to him, Boji still protesting, crawling over his shoulder and trying to see the other parid’ja.

Boji then decided to try to clean the spots of egg off the side of his face, licking it off with a little black tongue. It was rough and efficient, but Boji forgot about that when Lucasi brought another egg from their hiding place. He was all attentive, and when Cajeiri gave it to him, he held onto it very nicely and made a neat little hole in it and began eating it while sitting on Cajeiri’s arm, pausing to lick his lips.

Boji had gotten much quieter, then, when Eisi and Lieidi came in to find out the damage.

Boji held onto his egg and tucked tight into the crook of Cajeiri’s arm. Cajeiri found himself still being Boji’s tree—now a safe nook in a branch—but Antaro was right: Instead of ru

It was different than a mechieta, which was certainly not going to tuck into the crook of one’s arm, but some few of which, so he had heard, might take to following one about.

He had, from being the heir of the aishidi’tat, become Boji’s tree, that was what.

And mani was back on the ground in Shejidan.

And his father let him keep Boji andhis birthday party. And his father, seeming in a good humor, knew about parid’ji, and knew what kind of creatures they were, and thought it fu

It was all right, then, that his father had laughed.

He remembered how he had looked in the mirror and decided he really had looked somewhat fu

He just preferred not to look fu

12

  Lord Geigi made it into the Bujavid half an hour after Ilisidi made it upstairs with her two elevator-loads of staff.

And, somewhat out of breath, Lord Geigi turned up at Bren’s apartment door, with only his bodyguard and a small set of baggage beside the wardrobe crate—particularly greeting the staff as well as Bren, who came from his office to meet him there. “Narani-nadi, Jeladi-nadi, such an additional pleasure! Thank you, thank you, nandi, for putting up with me! One will miss so your company, and one will miss your hospitality, Rani-ji, my neighbor on the station. Nand’ Bren, your staff on station has been so solicitous of me and so closely associated to my staff—they have been my associates, too, my consolation and advice, on whom I have not hesitated to rely in the darkest of times. One was so glad to be invited here, for an opportunity to bid them a proper farewell—so, so delighted to see all of you and to have another of Bindanda’s di