Protector

It will make me happy if you can make my mother happy. Please do it.

And then he remembered the whole other business, astonished that it could all have slipped from his mind.

Mani, my guests are coming early, and my father says I shall go to you as soon as you send for me, and you will be in charge of everything we do just as soon as you send for me. My mother wishes the party to be here, in our apartment—but all the days before and after, until my guests go home on the shuttle, I shall be staying with you, or with nand’ Bren if I am inconvenient. I am very happy. I am very much looking forward to this. I shall pack right away.

He revised it in a third copy, just because he had been careless in his penmanship. He wanted it perfect.

Then he dashed off a letter to nand’ Bren, who did not care about his penmanship.

He put the one to mani in his best message cylinder, and sent that one with Lucasi. He put the other in his second-best, and sent it with Veijico.

Then he sat down in his own little sitting room, on the edge of his chair, all happiness, and looked at Antaro and Jegari, who still amazed him, they looked so official and grown-up.

“We are going to stay with Great-grandmother,” he said. “We have to pack. We have to take Boji with us, but Eisi and Lieidi are going with us, too.” He drew a deep, shuddery breath, and let it go. “I think, I think, nadiin-ji, that my birthday is really about to happen.”

10

The Committee on Finance was meeting, and the committee room doors were shut. The paidhi, down the hall in the legislative lounge, was on his second pot of strong tea, while his aishid kept contact with the dowager’s—who were in touch with Tatiseigi’s bodyguard, Tatiseigi being a very important force behind those closed doors, and doing a great deal of talking, on that committee.

Reports came in slowly, by runners who stood at the front of the room and reported succinctly on the progress of the bill. The bill was being read. Again.

He had two of his secretarial staff doing exactly the same thing, from the gallery of the large meeting room, observing not only the progress of the bill, but who was talking to whom that might be significant. The two cycled back to him in turns, bringing him notes, occasionally a whispered word—not the only such runners communicating with individuals in the lounge.

There were motions to table. Again.

Damn, Bren thought. And there was not a thing he could do. The aiji might intervene, as the alleged author of the bill, but even Tabini didn’t have the clout with Finance that the dowager did . . . and she had enemies in that room, too.

And the fact that he, the paidhi had written much of the bill—was notsomething its supporters were advertising to anybody in that conservative-dominated meeting room. One had to wonder if that fact might yet get out and sway votes.

The bill didn’t need any more problems. It was a sensitive matter, the inclusion of the tribal peoples as equals in the aishidi’tat. It meant dismantling the tribes’ special status, giving them a voice in the Bujavid, and releasing, for many of the clans, an ancient prejudice, at least, that held the tribes as foreign to the mainland.

On the other side of the scales, tribal peoples would agree to abandon their independence and their separate languages for official use—the only exception being their own ceremonial and festival observances. It alsoentailed something the conservatives wanted: an agreement to accept operations of all guilds within the former tribal lands, and, by separate agreement with the tribes, they would not insist on tribal peoples serving only their own clan—they would adopt, in essence, the same rule the Ragi clans followed, which it would put Edi and Gan in service in households all across the aishidi’tat. Tatiseigi and the dowager weren’t making any noise about that matter, yet, just letting that separate little bomb skitter through unnoticed.