Djinana laid his load on the table. “The staff has no intention of surrendering Malguri to any ill-advised rabble.” Djinana whisked out a comb and brush from his kit, and came to his chair. “Forgive me, nand’ paidhi, please continue your breakfast—but they’re in some little hurry, and I can fix this.”
“You’re worth more than stones, Djinana!”
“Please.” Djinana pushed him about in the chair, pushed his head forward and brushed with a vengeance, then braided a neat, quick braid, while he ate a piece of bread gone too dry in his mouth and washed it down with bitter tea,
“Nadi-ji, did you know why they brought me here? Did you know about the ship? Do you understand, it’s not an attack, it’s not aimed at you.”
“I knew. I knew they suspected that you had the answer to it.—And I knew very soon that you would never be our enemy, paidhi-ji.” Djinana had a clip from somewhere—the man was never at a loss. Djinana finished the braid, brushed off his shoulders, and went and took up his coat. “There’s no time to change clothes, I fear, and best you wait until you’re on the plane. I’ve packed warm clothing for a change this evening.”
He got up from the chair, turned his back to Djinana, and toward the window. “Are they sending a van up?”
“No, paidhi-ji. A number of people are on their way up here now, I hear, on buses. I truly don’t think they’re the ones to fear. But you’re in very good hands. Do as they say.” Djinana shoved him about by the shoulder, helped him on with the coat, and straightened his braid over the collar. “There. You look the gentleman, nadi. Perhaps you’ll come back to Malguri. Tell the aiji the staff demands it.”
“Djinana,—” One couldn’t even say I like. “I’ll certainly tell him that. Please, thank everyone in my name.” He went so far as to touch Djinana’s arm. “Please see that you’re here when I come visiting, or I’ll be greatly distressed.”
That seemed to please Djinana, who nodded and quietly took his leave past a disturbance in the next room—Ilisidi’s voice, insisting, “They won’t lay a hand on me!”
And Cenedi’s, likewise determined:
“ ’Sidi-ji, we’re getting out, damned if they won’t come inside! Shut up and get your coat!”
“Cenedi, it’s quite enough to remove him out of range…”
“Giri, get ’Sidi’s coat! Now!”
The guards’ eyes had shifted in that direction. Nothing of their stance had altered. He gathered up his change of clothes and wrapped it about his computer, waiting with that in his arms and his kit in his hand, listening as Cenedi gave orders for the locking of doors and the extinguishing of fires.
But Djinana’s voice, distantly, said that the staff would see to those matters, that they should go, quickly, please, and take the paidhi to safety.
He stood there, the center of everyone’s difficulty, the reason for the danger to Malguri. He felt that the absolute least he could do was put himself conveniently where they wanted him. He supposed that they would go out through the hall and down; he ventured as far as the door to the reception room, but Cenedi burst through that door headed in the opposite direction, bringing Ilisidi with him, on a clear course toward the rearmost of Ilisidi’s rooms, with a number of guards following.
“Where’s Banichi?” he tried to ask as they went through the bedroom, with the guards trailing him, but Cenedi was arguing with Ilisidi, hastening her on through the hallways at the back of the apartments, to a back stairs. A man he thought he recognized from last night stood at the landing, holding a weapon he didn’t know, shoving shells into the butt from a box on the post of the stairs.
That gun wasn’t supposed to exist. He had never seen that man on staff in Malguri. Banichi and Jago, and presumably Tano and Algini, with them, had gone somewhere he didn’t know, a mob wanted to turn him over to rebels against Tabini—and they were bound down to the back side of Malguri, down, he realized as Cenedi and Ilisidi opened the doors onto shadowed stone—to a stairway beside the stable, where the hisses and grumbling of mecheiti out in the courtyard told him how they were leaving Malguri, unless they were taking this route only to divert pursuit—