Visitor: A Foreigner Novel by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online Page B

Geigi, on watch and watch for days, and still due to wait for Gin, deserved to come home to domestic tranquility.
    Nor did Irene deserve to have to explain herself.
    “Is Irene moving back to Geigi’s apartment?” he asked, and Banichi asked the question of staff.
    “No,” Banichi reported as the lift stopped. “The young gentleman has told staff she is a guest of the aiji-dowager.”
    Cajeiri would not hedge that fine point. So Ilisidi was aware, and had involved herself in the matter. That might or might not ease tensions. Not, was more likely.
    “We shall go there,” he said, hauling his mind back from problems of an oncoming alien ship and a new human administration, and back to the smaller politics of three sets of Reunioner parents, of vastly different social class, thrown onto the charity of an atevi lord and the earnest efforts of his staff.
    Hell with the social class. He was on the side of the agreeable ones. And he was forming opinions.
    • • •
    The apartment door opened before they reached it, grace of his aishid’s advisement to Geigi’s staff that he was coming, and Geigi’s major d’ met him in the foyer.
    “Be welcome, nandi. One is uncertain whether the problem need involve the paidhi-aiji, but the young gentleman being here . . . one felt obliged to notify the other staff.”
    “I am glad you did report it,” he said. “What is the nature of the problem?”
    “There is a request to return to the sealed sections, nandi, and we are instructed not to allow it. The young gentleman has arrived with Irene-nadi, and by our lord’s instructions we have done our utmost to make our guests comfortable. But one person asks urgently to be allowed to return to his apartment, fearing for something left there.”
    “We are not surprised at that. Let me reassure them.”
    “Yes,” the major d’ said with relief, and led the way down the hall which brought them, in the traditional way, past the dining room and master’s bedroom, past the bath, and to the door of the very large guest suite. The major d’ knocked once, then opened the automated door, in the way servants of any earthly house would do.
    The adults, likewise the eldest boy, Bjorn, were startled by the entry; not so, the three youngest, not so Cajeiri.
    “Nand’ Bren,” the major d’ announced him, “paidhi-aiji, Lord of Najida, Lord of the Heavens.”
    Bren walked in, bowed politely to Cajeiri, and to Irene, the dowager’s guest. Artur and Gene stood up at once. Their parents and Bjorn rose uncertainly. Bjorn’s father stayed slouched in a chair. Bjorn’s mother stood by a guest-room door. And Banichi and Jago, Tano and Algini, took up position by the main door, and the sides of the room.
    Atevi would not have been anxious at that move. The parents were. Bjorn’s father straightened in his chair. Bjorn’s mother came to stand beside it. Only Cajeiri stayed seated . . . and Irene. One did not miss that little move of Cajeiri’s hand, bidding her, the dowager’s guest, stay seated.
    Manners. Manners that played out in a handful of seconds.Manners which wouldn’t govern the parents where
they
were going, but which would definitely govern three of the children, in the circles where they might move.
    “Nadiin-ji,” Bren said. There were two chairs unoccupied in the little sitting room, and he took one. Servants waited to provide tea, and as much tea as the whole company must have absorbed this morning, he signaled acceptance for form’s sake. “Please. Sit down. We’ll go on human custom, and I
will
answer questions frankly. I hope you’ve been comfortable.”
    The parents’ anxious glances flicked between him, seated, to the four black-clad, armed Assassins’ Guild standing solemn guard.
    He understood their unease. They had been lifted out of one threatening situation and dropped into a world as alien to them as that oncoming ship. Their lives were in suspension. There were things they didn’t know and no one